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Winter 2011

BY ALL APPEARANCES

When you think of someone as
‘that racist” then you’re missing
the point, p. 44

CULTURE CLUB

Htar Htar Yu ’08 knows what
it’s like to be a refugee./). 54

MO’S NOBEL

Discovering Mo Yan—years
before his Nobel./). 96

The Importance
of Language

,We examine the meaning
> and intricacies of human
communication.

1 1»

I * -

SPARK

a summer
internship

a scholarship

irl y

SPARK

research project

^ something

We're in peak condition for ignition!

Middlebury's got fantastic students, great faculty,
a stellar campus, international connections.

And alumni like you.

What more do we need? Your gift. "'\

It doesn't take much—every alumni gift
can spark something and really make it take off.
When more alumni give, our future grows
from bright to brilliant!

(

* Make your gift—of any size—today at

go.middlebury.edu/give. Thank you!

Middlebury

COVER ESSAY

By Rex Lee Jim, MA English ’oi

The Mother Tongue

Language is culture. The Navajo language is Navajo
culture. When one changes, so does the other. f[ Many
ceremonies and cultural activities peculiar to and as¬
sociated with the language that my grandparents spoke
are now gone. f[ I will never experience the Navajo

associated with that worldview. It is gone forever.
But language is alive. When it diminishes in one
area, it expands in another. In Navajo, we adopt
new words to articulate contemporary concepts
and objects like neuro-immunology and comput¬
ers. We strive to maintain the integrity of tradi¬
tion while accommodating an ever-changing world.

Although cultures may evolve and languages
may change with the times, certain linguistic and
cultural associations function as inalienable, im¬
mutable forces that keep us Navajos. One such
force is the notion of /^—relationship build¬
ing that is linguistically and culturally Navajo.
Within our clanship system, a 96-year-old grand¬
mother may call me “Daddy.” On Navajo, when I
talk about all my children, everyone understands.
Off Navajo, I am often asked how many children
I have and it is demanded of me to explain how
one of my children can be 46 years older than me.

I used to try, but now I don’t even bother. My re¬
ality in Navajo needs no explanation in English
to a non-Navajo worldview.

This peculiar relationship allows our elders
to be childlike again. It allows them to be goofy
without being ridiculed. They use this opportu¬
nity to ask of me as their father things that I can¬
not provide them. Through these interactions,
they teach me how to be a caring and loving fa¬
ther to my own children, passing on lifelong les¬
sons of parenting. At the same time, they would
tease my children as brothers and sisters, estab¬
lishing lasting and valuable relationships. These
elders and my children bond together for life, re¬
specting and loving one another as siblings.

In Navajo, we call our biological nieces “moth¬
ers.” From birth they are our mothers; our kin¬
ship demands that we respect them as matri¬
archs. Our interactions with them must help
them become mothers and leaders of the family.
Knowing this, I do my part, misbehaving and
allowing them to chastise me for being foolish.
In so doing, we begin to train them to become
matriarchs.

They learn quickly. On her first day at school
as a kindergartener, my youngest niece was run¬
ning around when her teacher asked her to stop.
When she refused, her teacher said, “I am going
to tell your uncle, the school board president.”

“What uncle?” she responded.

“Rex.”

“He’s not my uncle; he’s my son. I tell him what
to do!”

The Navajo teacher realized what was going
on. “Well, I will tell your ‘mother’ Janice (the
‘aunt’) at the high school.” My niece settled down
right away.

The Navajo language allows us to develop
intimate and unique relationships, which is
the foundation of strong, healthy communities.
When we no longer speak the language, what
makes us distinct and unique will be gone. We
will be speakers of English with brown skins. The
Navajo community will no longer be. □

COVER AND ABOVE ILLUSTRATION BY HEADS OF STATE

Winter 2013 1

ISC E N El

There’s a certain time of day at Middlebury’s Rikert
Nordic Center that’s filled with possibility It happens
when the sun hangs low on the horizon, extending a
winter evening into what might be called dark from
the vantage of one’s kitchen table, f It is, however, a
widely unseen period of time, an illuminating hour that
rolls in movement and harmony over the well-groomed
trail, f I’ve watched the College skiers in this hour slip
into a type of unconscious meditation—watched them
draw into the routine movements of skiing and emerge
from the last of the daylight, buoyed by their time in
low winter sun, filled with energy and capability.

By Coach Andrew Gardner, Photograph by Brett Simison

The Carroll and Jane Rikert
Nordic Center at Bread
Loaf Mountain features 50
kilometers of meticulously
maintained Nordic trails
bordered by national forest.
This season marks the first
with its newly installed snow¬
making system.

Located at the center of
campus, the William Tell
Coleman Library houses a
print and digital collection

that supports teaching and

research at the Monterey
Institute of International
Studies.

On any given day, you’ll find students of nonprolifera¬
tion and terrorism studies moving between the shelves
and online collections that focus on national security,
international relations, and international law. f And
students who are studying to teach English to speakers
of other languages delve into education and linguistics
resources, while other students studying translation
and interpretation sit at tables in the reference room,
surrounded by specialized dictionaries. International
MBA students check online international-consumer
studies from their classrooms, and students doing an
internship abroad can retrieve articles from our many
e-journal packages, f For a break, students often relax
in front of the library and enjoy a bit of sun and fresh
sea air, or maybe take a quick walk down the hill to
Fisherman’s Wharf. Then it’s back to work.

By Ann Flower, Assistant Director, William Tell Coleman
Library, Monterey Institute of International Studies
Photograph by Bridget Besaw

Winter 2013 7

Two Vermont Tibetans welcomed the Dalai Lama’s
motorcade when he arrived. His Holiness stepped over
to them, and the interaction was so very special. The
Dalai Lama treated everyone he met with kindness,
attention, and good humor—yet there was something
deep, numinous, loving, reverent, and holy happening
in that particular moment that I will always remember,
f So while his visit, on the one hand, was a whirlwind of
events as His Holiness and his entourage moved from
venue to venue, there were also such incredibly focused,
still, and memorable moments like this. And yet he is
also quite playful: sneaking up behind me on the stage
and completely startling me while entertaining his hap¬
py audience, f As an outsider, who had this brief but
close experience with a charismatic holy man and his
disciples, seeing the crowds who want to be near and
touch him . . . well, this gave me experiential insight
into the stories I grew up with in my own tradition.

By Chaplain Laurie Macaulay Jordan ’79, Photograph by Brett Simison

His Holiness the Dalai
Lama visited Middlebury
in early October, giving
talks to crowds in Nelson
Arena on both Friday and
Saturday of his stay.

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Middlebury

CONTENTS^*!

UPFRONT

FEATURES

Vignette

Our Observer visits the Davis Family Library

Language, in Depth

This issue, we tackle a topic germane to every human: language. Our selections:

2< Colophon

Behind the lyrics of the American Negro
Spiritual with Francois Clemmons

29 Fact Finder

A survey of the Middlebury Orchestra

30 Dialogue

China experts Don Wyatt and Jessica Teets
discuss that country’s latest political shift

Map

A guide to Nordic and alpine skiing at Midd

Old Chapel

President Liebowitz on the importance of
language education at Middlebury

CLASS ACTS

Pursuits

Htar Fftar Yu ’08 knows a thing or two about be¬
ing a refugee. She spent most of her childhood
hiding in the Burmese jungle

In the Queue

A young man comes of age on Evel Knievel Day

Class Notes
Vault

Dropping the puck with Tom Stillman ’74

6 Short Story

Revisiting Winter Carnival in a bygone era

Autobiography

The life of Ronald Lawson ’56

Philosophy professor John Spackman on the meaning of language
A look at how technology is changing the way languages are learned
Student Dylan Redford ’14 on living with dyslexia

Language Schools VP Michael Geisler on the country’s need for a strategic language reserve
Monterey dean Renee Jourdenais on the global import of understanding English

Road Taken

Anna Schonberg ’95 on Nobel laureate Mo Yan

To see who this hat
belongs to, turn
to page 68.

By All Appearances

Dwayne Nash ’99 was once a part of the legal institution he now seeks to reform.
By Sierra Crane-Murdoch ’09

Whither Courtly Love

A writer comes to terms with the now-controversial concept. By Meghan Laslocky ’89

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD BALFOUR (ABOVE) AND RON SEYMOUR (ABOVE RIGHT).

Upcoming Events

Reunion June 7-9, 2013

Catch up with your Middlebury classmates and friends over
a fun and festive weekend. Bring your family or a friend!

Alumni College
August 29-September 1, 2013
Plan an end-of-summer
getaway to the beautiful Bread
Loaf campus and explore
fascinating subjects with some
of Middlebury s best teachers.
(Parents are welcome, too!)

■

34th Annual Alumni

Golf Tournament

September 7-8, 2013

In honor of Gordon C. Perine ’49
Not just for alumni!
Parents are encouraged to
participate, and bring family
and friends along. Housing is
available at Bread Loaf.

Middlebury

For more information, please visit
go.middlebury.edu/alumni or call 802.443.5183.

MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE
BOARD OF TRUSTEES

PRESIDENT
Ronald D. Liebowitz

FELLOWS
Louis Bacon ’79
Adrian Benepe ’78
Eve B. Burton
Anthony M. Civale ’96
Allan R. Dragone, Jr. ’78
Donald M. Elliman, Jr. 67
Frederick M. Fritz ’68
Charles M. Gately 62
Amy Yeager Geier
Catherine Lee ’92
Russell J. Leng ’60
Carol Levitch

Caroline Sneath McBride ’75
Patrick L. McConathy
David R. Mittelman ’76
Garrett M. Moran ’76
Kimberly Collins Parizeau ’79
Steven B. Peterson ’88
S. Carolyn Ramos ’93
Elisabeth B. Robert '78
Susan J. Scher '86
Jed A. Smith ’88
Deborah G. Thomas ’75
John R. Tordmondsen ’82
James Edward Virtue ’82
Marna C. Whittington
Linda Foster Whitton ’80
Kendrick R. Wilson III

TRUSTEES EMERITI

James I. Armstrong

Dort A. Cameron III '67

James S. Davis '66

Churchill G. Franklin ’71

Nancy Coffrin Furlong ’75

Claire Waterhouse Gargalli ’64

Robert C. Graham, Jr. ’63

Willard T. Jackson ’51

Betty Ashbury Jones, MA French ‘86

William H. Kieffer III '64

Roxanne McCormick Leighton ’67

John M. McCardell, Jr.

C. Irving Meeker ’50
Jonathan O’Herron
Patricia Judah Palmer 57
Milton V. Peterson ’58
W. Kyle Prescott 49
Felix G. Rohatyn 49
David E. Thompson 49
Robert P. Youngman 64

OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION
Marna C. Whittington, Chair
Ronald D. Liebowitz, President
John R. Tormondsen ’ 82 , Vice Chair
Kendrick R. Wilson III, Vice Chair
David A. Donahue ’ 91 , Secretary
Stephanie M. Neil, Assistant Secretary
Patrick J. Norton, Treasurer

10 Middlebury magazine

EDITORS NOTE

STAFF

\no PETS

ALLOWED
IN ZOO

Winter 2013
Volume 87, Number 1

EDITOR
Matt Jennings

ART DIRECTOR
Pamela Fogg

SENIOR EDITOR

Blair Kloman, M.A. English ’94

ASSISTANT EDITOR
Regan Eberhart

ALUMNI EDITOR
Sara Thurber Marshall

SENIOR DESIGNER
Carey Bass 99

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Stephen Diehl, Robert Keren, Maria Stadtmueller

7 //* 2 -

Remembering Tad

Tad Merrick died.

For many years, Tad took photographs for this
magazine. Just about any individual item that you
saw in these pages—a book, something culled
from the archives, a ceramic green chicken—was
captured on film (and eventually digitally) by Tad
in his second-floor studio above what is now a
“Vermont products” shop on Main Street.

Tad was a tall, oft-goateed fellow with gigantic
feet and a goofy sense of humor. He liked to talk;
encounters on the street could eventually lead
to extended conversations back in his studio or
at Otter Creek Bakery, where he was a regular
customer, because one can only stand on a street
corner gabbing away for so long. But it was well
worth doing so, because Tad had a lot of interesting
things to talk about.

At various stages of his life, he worked on a
fishing boat, managed an urban farm center in
San Francisco, and taught emotionally disturbed
youths; he played the bass guitar and loved the
outdoors. But photography was his true passion
and, ultimately, his vocation.

A visit to his studio was like stepping into a
story, a fairy tale, with Tad playing the role of the
bumbling, gentle giant. It was a mess in there,
but Tad knew exactly where everything was. And
he’d no sooner set up lighting than he’d trip over

the light stands. But when it was time to shoot,
it was as if a switch had been flipped. He became
the consummate pro. His subjects were expertly
lit and framed, every angle explored.

In addition to his work for the magazine,
Tad was the photographer of record for just
about every installation mounted in the College’s
Museum of Art; he also took individual photo¬
graphs of museum acquisitions, which were used
in catalogues, brochures, as publicity stills, and
for archival records.

Of course, Tad was recognized as a fine artist
himself, and it’s fitting that a few of his images,
including the one on this page, have been acquired
by the museum. The above photo —Untitled, 1982 ,
New York City—is quintessential Tad. It reveals his
sense of humor, his keen eye, his artistic influences
that include the film noir of Ingmar Bergman and
the social landscape of Lee Friedlander. I would
have loved to have been there when he saw this
sign, to see his face light up, to hear his laugh, to
watch him work.

Not too long ago, I found myself on Main Street,
pausing in front of a recessed doorway behind
which stands a creaky set of stairs leading to a
second-floor space, now empty. The sign for “Tad
Merrick Photography” was gone, and so is he. But
his memory and his work live on .—MJ

EDITORIAL OFFICE

152 College Street
Middlebury, Vermont 05753
Phone: 802.443.5670
E-mail: middmag@middlebury.edu
Online: www.middmag.com

ADVERTISING SALES OFFICE

H. Abby Hummel

18 Garfield Street

Bristol, Vermont 05443

Phone: 802.453.2913

E-mail: Abby@GetSmartVt.com

ADDRESS CHANGES
Alumni Records
Middlebury College
5 Court Street
Middlebury, Vermont 05753

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official
policies of the College.

Middlebury College of Middlebury. Vermont, publishes Middlebury
Magazine (ISSN 0745-2454) four times a year: winter, spring, summer, and fall.

© 2013 Middlebury College Publications. Middlebury Magazine is printed at The
Lane Press in South Burlington, Vermont. Nonprofit standard mail postage paid
at Middlebury, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices (USPS 964-820).
Printed in U.S.A.

Middlebury Magazine is printed on a combination of 50% post-consumer
fiber (cover) and 100% post-consumer (text) paper.

FSC

MIX

Paper from
responsible sources

FSC* C022085

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAD MERRICK

Winter 2013 11

Talk

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

CORRESPONDENCE

The Heads of State (Cover; Language, in Depth) are
actually the wacky duo Jason Kernevich and Dustin
Summers, who call the gritty streets of Philadelphia
home. Their agency made its bones in the music
industry, designing posters and other material for the
likes of REM, The National. Wilco. and Iron & Wine.
Now, though, their work has appeared on book jackets,
in magazines, and as corporate identity from folks as
varied as The New Yorker and Nickelodeon. Check ’em
out at theheadsofstate.com.

Jessica Hische (‘Whither Courtly Love*) is a world-
class illustrator and type designer who has counted
writer Dave Eggers, the New York Times, American
Express, and the film director Wes Anderson among
her clients. A self-professed “oversharer,” Jessica gives
her thoughts, presents her work, and offers up some fun
stuff for sale at her wonderful website, jessicahische.is.
So hustle off and learn more about her. She’s a delight.

Rex Lee Jim, MA English ’01 (Cover Essay) is a poet,
a teacher, an advocate for the rights of indigenous
people, and the vice president of the Navajo Nation.
Language has always been of particular interest to Rex-
something he talks about at length at go.middlebury.
edu/rexleejim. We feel fortunate to include his thoughts
on the fascinating subject of language and cultural
fluency in our pages.

Meghan Laslocky ’89 (“Whither Courtly Love”) is a
journalist and the author of The Little Book of Heart¬
break: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages. Our own
Julia Alvarez 71 calls Meghan’s debut book “a fun,
engaging, and comprehensive romp through heartache
and heartbreak.” Meghan grew up in Addison County,
studied English literature at the College, attended grad
school at Berkeley, and now plies her trade in the Bay
Area. Her website is meghanlaslocky.com.

Sierra Crane-Murdoch ’09 (“By All Appearances”) is a
dogged reporter and dynamite writer, who has earned
prestigious scholarships, residencies, and fellowships
from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Banff
Program in Literary Journalism, and the Middlebury
Fellowships in Environmental Journalism program. She
recently received a gold medal for feature writing for
her profile of Howard Fauntroy ’89 (“In the Name of
the Father") in the winter 2011 issue. Her website is
sierramurdoch.com.

Ron Seymour ( By All Appearances”) is a photographer
based in Chicago, where he learned the art of the
craft at the knee of his father, the portraitist Maurice
Seymour. Ron opened his own studio in 1967 and has
specialized in both corporate work and photojournalism.
His work can be viewed at ronseymour.com.

The Plain Sense of Things

A scholar of poetry discovers genius in the unlikeliest of places.

I was working in my office early in the fall semes¬
ter of JOlO, when I heard a loud Vermont voice out in
the hall asking for “the head a’the English D'pahtment.'
Moments later, a type seldom seen in the halls of aca¬
deme filled my doorway Standing there, like something
out of a fairy talc, was a large, roughly dressed man with
shoulder-length hair and an enormous beard; a battered
green folder of papers was tucked under his arm.

sr the whore who
pee h bar l ber tawdry dot hcK wen t he spvit
bed it»cfe M in ibe <nB of wlf-onranouuir

I s

, : that

It the»rogur (txJd dotrt. and clean u thr ubraiCo
?h» will tterr me thonxigh tbe m«e» of my <lj%%

A ROAD MAP

I have moved south, replacing maple trees and
elm trees with live oaks and palms. Spanish moss
softens the tree limbs here; dusky gray filaments
are now my snow, and the strength of a hill sunset
has been supplanted by the intensity of a marsh
sunrise.

For many years I maintained my Middlebury
connection. I went to Bread Loaf and the Writ¬
ers’ Conference. I gave what I could financially
to the Annual Fund. I attended reunion and
Alumni College. I interviewed prospective stu¬
dents. I encouraged my high school students
to apply. I read the magazine. I championed
Middlebury at every opportunity.

And then Bicentennial Hall opened. I walked
in and, suddenly, my college no longer felt like
mine. I was incredibly saddened, awestruck by
the changes that spread across campus, gobbling
up buildings that I knew and replacing them with
things new and unfamiliar. Somehow I felt aban¬
doned. The reaction was completely emotional
and completely nonintellectual. I was, after all,
an English major.

Rather than embracing the changes, I stopped
cheering. I stopped attending reunions. I
stopped giving money. This summer, when in
Vermont, I went to a few stores downtown and
did not even drive up to the campus. I couldn’t.

But yesterday, Middlebury Magazine arrived.
And there was Brett Milker’s piece on Kim Lane
’ 76 . I read it. I cried. I looked in my 1976 Kalei¬
doscope and found Kim’s senior photo. There she
was, standing in a snowy field, wearing the ubiq¬

uitous turtleneck and sweater under a boiled
wool jacket. Flakes dusted her arm, her shoulder,
her hair. A wayward lock covered one eye, and
she was smiling directly at the camera. At that
moment, she did not know what she would be.
I did not know what I would be. The only cer¬
tainty was that things would change.

And then I realized that she knew, and I knew,
that some of us are migrants (as she later wrote).
When we return, memories are “muddled” and
the markers have changed. But that does not ne¬
gate the value of the experience, nor does it deny
the importance of transformation. Without
memory and dream, we are doomed.

The magazine may well be my road map back
to Middlebury. I know I would be lost without it.
I know I would be lost without my college—its
memories and its dreams.

I cannot give much, but I can give this. For
Kim, and for me—thank you.

—Charlotte Koplinka Landon ’ 76 , MA Eng¬
lish ’ 81 , Savannah, Georgia

A TRAGIC AND MOVING TALE

I was deeply moved by the story on the tragic
life and poetry of Kim Lane ’ 76 —“The Plain
Sense of Things,” written by Brett Millier and
illustrated by Hadley Hooper—in your fall issue.
I appreciated it more than I can convey in this
letter, inasmuch as the article can touch one in
so many ways: the anguished perfection of her
poetry, one’s sense of humanity, and, in the true
sense of the word, the tragedy of her death—un¬
timely, timely, or a blessed release, depending

12 Middlebury magazine

m|HHH Los estudiantes del campus de Logrono disfrutan dc una
vida nocturna que se desarrolla alrededor del antiguo mer-
cado, donde la gente sc reune con sus amigos para pasar la
tarde y la noche en sus restaurantes de tapas favoritos.

perhaps on the sensibilities we bring to her life
experience.

The most rewarding years of my working
life were those I spent as a high school English
teacher, first in a coeducational boarding school
in Colorado, and next as head of the English de¬
partment in Hanover High School in Hanover,
New Hampshire. Both while I was teaching and
in life afterwards, I have known students who
had undergone or were undergoing life experi¬
ences almost as deep and challenging as those
experienced by Kim, and who were trying to ex¬
press these in prose or poetry. But Kim’s work is
in a class almost by itself, and I am left wanting
more.

Wisdom comes through suffering, and to para¬
phrase William Faulkner, great literature is born
of the struggles of the human heart in conflict
with itself. Kim’s poetry stands as brilliant and
evocative evidence of that struggle, leaving me
to ask, where can her poetry go now? Perhaps Po¬
etry Magazine ? Her voice needs to be heard; her
poetry and her story deserve a broad audience.

—Lyman Allen ’53, Pagosa Springs, Colorado

NOT SO UNLIKELY?

Kudos to you for producing an alumni magazine
I enjoy reading. I’m not sure exactly what I ex¬
pected when I read the subtitle to Brett Millier’s
story (“The Plain Sense of Things”) in the fall
2012 issue: “A scholar of poetry discovers genius
in the unlikeliest of places.” A suitcase from a
rummage sale? A trip to an impoverished, unedu¬
cated section of (insert state or country)?

After reading about poems, which were hand
delivered to Professor Millier’s office, written
and collected by a Middlebury graduate who
had focused on writing since high school, I be¬
gan to wonder about the words “discovers” and
“unlikeliest.” Is a “real poet” more likely to be an
academic? Someone without mental illness? A
published writer? Who discovered whom in this
case?

The subtitle promises drama in all the wrong
places; I wish you had published more of Kim
Lane’s actual work. From the examples given, her
poetry is able to stand on its own and deserves
the full spotlight.

—Patricia Bauman Norton ’89, Thetford Cen¬
ter, Vermont

THOUGHTS ON REDESIGN AND KIM LANE 76

I’m probably in the minority in not being par¬
ticularly impressed with the new format of the
magazine. I find the emphasis on a complex for¬
mat and presentation, often convoluted and con¬

fusing, to be detrimental to content. Further, the
font is really tiny (I’m old after all), and the maga¬
zine is now so unwieldy that it has to be squeezed
into my mailbox.

But I do want to say that the piece titled “The
Plain Sense of Things” by Brett Millier is possi¬
bly the best piece I have seen in the more than
50 years I have been reading the magazine. The
writing is moving but not maudlin. The poet’s
life becomes positive and meaningful, rescued
somehow from melancholy and sadness. The
poetry, not enough of it, of course, is simply en¬
chanting.

I hope you can persuade Professor Millier to
continue to develop the poetry and story of Kim.
—Edward Hickcox ’53, Victoria, British Columbia

A JOB WELL DONE

I just received my copy of Middlebury Maga¬
zine and it looks fantastic. Its clean, contem¬
porary design is totally refreshing. The graph¬
ics and illustrations are terrific. The paper
choice and size and format are modern and
approachable. What a wonderful makeover!
And while I have not had the chance to finish
reading the entire issue, I was totally enthralled
with “The Plain Sense of Things” and plan to
share it with others.

Congratulations to you all.

—Liz Brooking ’81, San Francisco, California

CHANGE HAPPENS

The polarized image of America as a country di¬
vided between red and blue states is overdrawn;
for the most part, it only exists in the collective
imagination of Americans (“Politics in Ameri¬
ca: Myth or Reality,” fall 2012). Every day, most
Americans realize that government consists of
an active, if not overactive, bunch of civil ser¬
vants and representatives who will affect our na¬
tion consistently in one way or another. Change
happens.

—Brendan Ryan, Commenting on middmag.com
ANEW YEARS WISH

I always enjoy Middlebury Magazine and the fall
2012 edition was no exception. The cover es¬
say written by Frank Sesno ’77, “Just the Facts,”
showed that even the facts these days are not
black and white. And even if someone tries to
correct an error, social-networking sites and the
permanency of the Internet make this difficult
to do. What was most important to me about
this specific essay—sadly, most of the same chal¬
lenges it addresses exist north of the border ex¬
cept that we have limits on political donations—

NUMBERS

Mail Bag Brett Millier’s feature story on the tragic yet brilliant
life of Kim Lane ’76 struck the strongest emotional chord among
readers of our fall issue. And you all continue to offer impassioned
feelings about our summer redesign. The mail bag again is filled
to capacity, and nothing could make us more happy. Keep the
letters, tweets, comments, and blog posts coming!

TALK ENTRY PLATFORMS

letters

tweets

middmag.com comments
HI blog postings

LETTERS WE RECEIVED FROM CANADA

OTHER MAGAZINES REFERENCED
IN THIS ISSUE’S TALK DEPARTMENT

NUMBER OF LETTERS REFERENCING
THE MOVIE LINCOLN

Winter 2013 13

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was the comment that we must do better.

Before attending Middlebury College, and
even while there, I didn’t understand truly what
a liberal arts college was. I didn’t realize un¬
til the Bush era that the word liberal could be a
negative. Having just watched Steven Spielberg’s
movie Lincoln , which dealt with such mighty and
meaty issues as democracy and the republic, it is
discouraging to see discourse not just uncivilized
(some of the 1865 exchanges did get quite dis¬
courteous), but not existent at all.

My New Year’s wish is for Middlebury Magazine
to show the world how civil debate can expand
our thinking in one other area that puzzles me.

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While the 13th Amendment—which is what the
movie Lincoln is about—is something I would
hope no one would question today, the 2nd
Amendment (the right to bear arms) is one that
needs to be understood in today’s context. How
does one reconcile a person’s right to travel
free of fear of being shot in a public place like
a church or school with someone else’s right to
carry a weapon, concealed or not, in such areas?

Of course, discussion of taking arms against a
sea of troubles dates much earlier and the impli¬
cation is that action is better.

—Barb Amsden ’80, Toronto, Ontario

NOPE, NOT A RURAL LEGEND
An old friend said a prank I played senior year
showed up recently in a cartoon in the Middle¬
bury Magazine (“Rural Legend?”). I thought I
read each issue quite carefully, but obviously
this cartoon slipped right past me.

Senior year, we decided we really needed to
steal the candy machine and place it in Lisa
Cagliuso’s room because she had a sweet tooth
and often worked late. (What more rationale
does one need for a prank???) Anyway, we tried
to get the hockey guys on the hall to move it,
but they gave up and said it was too heavy. I
kept looking at the machine and the rug next
to it...and the solution just came to me. So four
girls rocked the machine onto the rug and we
dragged it into Lisa’s room and there it stayed
for at least a week. We all knew where it was—
so everyone just wandered into her room when
they wanted something.

I didn’t think anyone knew this story except
perhaps Janice Gadaire, who was in on the ca¬
per. At any rate, if this is indeed the prank that
Mark Stamaty immortalized sometime recently
in a cartoon, could you please possibly send a
copy to me? My teen daughters would be im¬
pressed that their nerdly mom thought up such
a prank, and I still miss Lisa so much. I’m sure
you folks know she died of cancer just a few
years after graduating from Midd.

So sorry I missed this on the first round. The
magazine just keeps getting better and better!
—Polly Holyoke ’81, Plano, Texas

THUMBS UP AND THANK YOU
I like the new format and content of the rede¬
signed magazine immensely. The Kim Lane ’76
story and the poems were a revelation. I’m still
working my way through the rest.

And thanks for including my letter about
Hank Prickitt and Paul Cubeta (“A Loss of Gi¬
ants”) with such minimal (and judicious) edit¬
ing. I felt I owed it to them both, for the good
they had done for me and for others.

Congratulations on the issue. Keep it up.
—Robert W. Parker ’53, Springfield, Ohio

14 Middlebury magazine

THIRST QUENCHED

The long drought is over! I must confess to years
of throwing my Middlebury Magazine straight
in the recycle bin. I didn’t catch on to the new
look with the last issue, but I’m devouring the
fall 2012 issue page by page. Thank you for the
long-awaited change.

—Erin Harrington ’99, Kodiak, Alaska

GOOD DIGS

Digging the new format, @MiddleburyMag.
Keep up the good work.

—@KrisJohnson_NI, Commenting on Twitter

ABOUT THAT TYPE

I second the comments of Brian Kheel ’63 (“Not
My Type, Part II,” fall 2012) as published on page
16 in the most recent issue. The reduced type
size in class notes is a bit small for my aging eyes,
and the light green type used for class member
names for classes ’60 to ’69 disappears into the
page, making the names harder to read than the
black type surrounding them. Sure would appre¬
ciate a change.

—Nancy Perry ’64, Crofton, Maryland

ABOUT THAT TYPE, PART II
We returned home last weekend after a month
away, and I found the new Middlebury Magazine
in the bin of accumulated mail. I’ve only had a
brief look at it but want to comment about two
things.

I liked the old, shiny cover better. (Not impor¬
tant; maybe you’re trying to save money.)

I find it really hard to pick out the names in
the class columns. Those light blue, green, beige
letters don’t stand out at all. It used to be so easy
to glance through a column and see a familiar
name and then read about him/her, and now you
have to wade through the whole (other class’s)
column looking for an interesting tidbit. Time
Magazine has started doing that sort of thing,
and so has one of the websites I check on (yel¬
low writing on a deep blue background, virtually
invisible). Is it just my aging eyesight that finds
this trend upsetting or have you had other com¬
ments? From my point of view, this makes the
magazine harder to read.

—Judy Bosworth Roesset ’62, Austin, Texas

PART III...

I like the new formatting and better paper qual¬
ity of the magazine, with one exception: the font
for class notes, certainly one of the most popu¬
lar sections of the magazine, is tiny. I can barely
read it; and I cannot read, without a bright flash¬
light, the names of the Midd grads under the var¬
ious year columns. The names are in tinted green
or red or blue or orange, and maybe some other
colors. The red is OK, the others generally illeg¬
ible. But the real problem is the size of the font.
—Bob Benedetti ’64, McLean, Virginia

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CHIRPS FOR BROOKS AND BISACCA

Enjoyed the stories on Japanese boat builder
D. Brooks & ptgs conservator G. Bisacca.

—@NancieRavenel, Commenting on Twitter

YOU ASKED FOR IT

I’ve just received and looked over carefully the
fall issue of Middlebury Magazine , and yes, it does
look and feel different!

I always used to hold the magazine as the per¬
fect example of what one of its kind should be.
Not only did I enjoy and respect it but I read ev¬
ery issue from front to back (even the ads).

I wish I could be as enthusiastic as many of
your readers seem to be of the new format (Talk,
fall 2012), but I can’t. Please don’t misunderstand
me; I don’t think it’s awful, I just don’t like it.

I’m sure most or maybe all of the new designs
and features will meet with broad approval. The
writing continues to be of the highest order. But
please consider using bigger type in the body of
the articles; and much bigger type in the case of
picture captions and comments. To me, it looks
like a sea of gray and puts me off from reading
what I know is good writing.

I think you have a great magazine staff, and I
wish you much good luck and success. Even if I
don’t love, love, love the new look.

—Theodore S. Smith, MA French ’60, Geneva,
New York

YOU ASKED, PART II

My husband (David June ’63) and I (Carol June
’66) enjoy the updated editorial content. Still,
our major interest is news about people we know.
We like to scan the class notes.

The use of green and blue names makes this
very difficult. We much preferred the previous
style of bold face. (BTW: I was a freelance writer
and editor for 20 years, and my admittedly lim¬
ited training in graphic arts stressed that such
colors are hard to read. They are.)

Additionally, we would prefer one less article
per issue to allow for a larger typeface in the class
notes. We don’t think this need will go away as
we add years. Perhaps you should use the small
typeface for the most recent classes and increase
it for each decade. Just kidding, sort of.

—Carol Gillen June ’66, Raleigh, North
Carolina

Editors’ Note: As we continue to study and con¬
sider font issues in the class notes department,
we can say that we’ve decided to remove the light
green and blue colors from our palette. Thanks
for the feedback.

REMEMBERING STEPHEN FREEMAN
I met Stephen A. Freeman in the summer of 1959
when I first attended Middlebury’s prestigious
Ecole fran^aise. On the first evening, during the
introductory session, I was in the first row and,

16 Middlebury magazine

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fortuitously and coincidentally, Steve sat next to
me. That was the start of a friendship that only
grew over the years and terminated on io July
1999, four decades later, when my beloved friend
and mentor died. He was, is, and will always be,
remembered as a quintessential beacon of level¬
headedness, acumen, savvy, and integrity, for he
created a remarkable legacy through his commit¬
ment to the many causes to which he dedicated
himself.

I am writing to state that I thoroughly enjoyed
reading about Steve’s naval aviation career (“Na¬
val Aviator 1091”) in the fall 2012 issue of Middle¬
bury Magazine. Here was a man who greatly ame¬
liorated the quality of life for all of us, and he will
never be forgotten!

—Mel B. Yoken, French School ’59, ’63, New
Bedford, Massachusetts

FOLGER-SPARKED MEMORIES

Reading about the RV David Folger (“The Folger
Arrives,” fall 2012) instantly brings me back to
the fall of my freshman year in 1970 when I took
oceanography with Professor Folger. I remem¬
ber spending a lot of time scraping and painting
Middlebur/s first vessel, the Bruno C. Schmidt.

We finally got onto the lake in October and
spent a fair amount of our time documenting
the sludge around the International Paper plant
south of Ticonderoga. Glad to see Middlebury
has a faster craft, because with a flank speed in
the single-digit knot range, we spent a dispro¬
portionate amount of our lab periods motoring
to and from our research collection area.

—John Morosani ’74, Commenting on middmag.
com

KUDOS TO DR. FOLGER

I have fond memories of doing work on the lake
with Dr. Folger—once helping him move the
small boat available in the early 1970s from its
southern berth to points north on the lake as our
class studies dictated. Naming this new research
vessel in his honor is a very fitting tribute to a
man who inspired many

—Susan Currie Price ’75, Commenting on middmag
com

PENALTY FLAG

I noticed the article titled “The Folger Arrives”
(fall 2012) with the accompanying photo of the
research vessel tied up at the Point Bay Ma¬
rina. Having spent my early Middlebury years
working summers driving a yacht-club launch in
Marblehead, Massachusetts, I became familiar
with local yachts “dressing ship,” particularly on
holidays and special occasions. Confirming my
doubts on the Folgers incorrect display of flags,
in this case pennants, I referred to the United
States Power Squadron flag etiquette, which in¬
dicated that the International Code of Signal
Flags should have been used. As a former com¬
mercial ship captain relayed to me, the Folger

18 Middlebury magazine

looked as if it was using pennants left over from
a 1950s gas station celebration.

—David Percival ’59, Tenants Harbor, Maine

AN INSPIRATION

When the Dalai Lama was at Middlebury in the
early 1990s, I really didn’t understand what I was
witnessing (“His Holiness Returns,” summer
2012). It is inspiring to see the College maintain¬
ing this connection and to see the excitement
and awe of those who were present. They clearly
understand far more than I did when I was in
their place.

—Alyssa Sinclair ’94, Commenting on middmag

AW, SHUCKS

Among the magazines that land in my inbox,
I thought the strongest years were enjoyed
by Denison , Middlebury , Portland , and The Penn
Stater , but that couldn’t be more subjective.
—Dale Keiger, Writing on the blog UMagazinology

NOTES ON A SHOOT

Photographing George Bisacca ’77 in the Met¬
ropolitan Museum of Art presented some inter¬
esting challenges. Because of the location of the
assignment—a studio filled with artwork valued
between very expensive and priceless—I could
not bring traditional strobes, not even battery-

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powered ones. Heavier lights, cables, and larger
light modifiers were a no-go. George let me know
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WHY WE LOVE CLASS NOTES

The latest issue of Middlebury Magazine arrived
recently; naturally I first turned to the class notes
section, but this time I didn’t skip immediately
to the end to read about my peers.

I was delightfully surprised to read the note
from Janet Kemp Doell ’45 who talked about
her plans to move to Alaska. I imagined a strong,
proud woman lacing up her winter boots (prob¬
ably LL Bean) and stepping out to weather the
cold snow of Homer, Alaska, so that she could
spend time with her two children and watch
the sun kiss the lake next to her town between
the mountains. Her note reminded me of the
sound the snow made underneath my feet as
I marched through the winter term to begin a
new class, internship, or swim practice. Janet—
thank you for sharing, and good luck in Homer!
—Kevin O’Rourke ’09, New York, New York

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We invite over twenty-five dynamic, leading professionals to
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LETTERS POLICY

Letters addressing topics discussed in the maga¬
zine are given priority, though they may be edited
for brevity or clarity On any given subject we
will print letters that address that subject, and
then in the next issue, letters that respond to the
first. After that, we will move on to new subjects.
Send letters to: Middlebury Magazine , 152 College
Street, Middlebury, VT 05753 or middmag@
middlebury.edu.

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22 Middlebury magazine

24 Vignette
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PHOTOGRAPH BY BRETT SIMISON

■■■1HHIVIGNETTE

By The Observer

Around the Clock

Each issue, The Observer illuminates a corner of
Middlebury, offering glimpses of life in Vermont,
at a school abroad, or along the coast of California.
In this issue, our chronicler visits the Davis Family
Library during exam week.

Five bright bands of light blaze from an other-
wise dark wall as one approaches the Davis Family
Library from the south. It is well past ten on this
December Sunday night, and with the beginning
of exam period, the library has gone on the 24/7
schedule. Snow is said to be on the way, but there
are 39 bicycles and one scooter propped outside
the main door.

Past the caffeine-brimmed Wilson Cafe, past
cell-phone talkers and a student smiling into a
Skype screen on her laptop, through the heavy
doors into the atrium, beyond circulation and help
desks, to the edge of the most public space in the
library: a senior crouches over sheaves of graded
papers and photocopied book chapters.

He makes notes in a spiral notebook, but
doesn’t appear to be in a concentration groove
yet. Sights and sounds: entering and exiting, ren¬
dezvous and regroupings, passing bodies, eddies
of conversations from beyond shelves, a greater
hubbub audible from the outside of the main
doors. Here in the ringing gateway to the halls of
quiet study there is a parade of distractions, and
he looks up frequently. His feet take the place of
papers on a low table. He produces a laptop and
taps. A friend appears and there is a consultation
about take-home exams as well as driving-home
plans. Five minutes later, he has removed to other
circumstances.

On the eastern end of the main floor, inside the
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research, a
white board proclaims “Tutoring During Exams!”
and lists review sessions for economics, chemistry,
and math. Peer writing tutors are on call from
early evening until midnight, whether at the
center or at various Commons. Nearby, a sign in
the Wilson Media Development Lab instructs on
technological-software aid: “Turn on. Log in. Get
Smart. Lynda.com. Tutor available 24/7.”

Up the long curve of the staircase to the second
floor, tight focus is the norm in the Quiet Study
Area. Faces gleam with reflected light from laptops,
elbows flanked by little ramparts of stacked books
with pads and pens at the ready, and students si¬
lently build arguments, buttress theories, review
a semester’s stock of ideas, groping for the perfect
handle to carry them all. One is hard-pressed to
hear any whispers.

In an unobtrusive, 20-minute stroll past desks,
study tables, carrels, darting quick glances at indi¬
vidual screens, not a glimmer of social media can
be seen—not one Facebook or Flickr or Renren or
LAGbook or Linkedln—and not one Wikipedia
page. Satisfied, relieved, even hopeful, one de¬
termines never to take such a poll again in such a
place. Better not to spoil the fleeting impression.

At last heading out into the night, with one
observer’s exit, the overall age average at Davis
Family Library plummets.

Bright and slanting daylight, a smattering of
snow on the ground, and the Davis fagade of local
marble, granite, and limestone is a screen upon
which shadows of surrounding winter trees are
projected. Behind every window of the Wilson
Cafe is a garland of Tibetan prayer flags, sending
up hopes with each tiny flutter from the warm,
coffee-scented updrafts of booth tables.

In the gusty vestibule, display cases commemo¬
rate the visit of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

24 Middleburv magazine

LLUSTRATION BY BRETT RYDER

UpFront

in 1984—posters, programs, candids from the
indefatigable Middlebury photographer Erik Borg.

Farther into the building are similar displays
from the Dalai Lama’s appearance in 1990. There
are many people in the world who would venerate
the sidewalk, the flagstones, the Davis thresh¬
old, the slate and carpeted floors, because nine
weeks earlier, October 12-13, His Holiness came
to Middlebury again to “cultivate hope, wisdom,
and compassion” with two addresses in Nelson
Arena and a visit to the library to view sacred
Tibetan manuscripts and a Tibetan contemporary
art exhibition.

Outside Davis, the air scented by bundles of
incense, the Dalai Lama blessed a newly planted
Burr oak uercus macrocarpa) and tied a white
fringed prayer shawl around a slender trunk that
one day, perhaps in a hundred years, will be as many
feet tall and three or even four feet in diameter, the
surrounding ground crunchy with acorns.

Inside on the second floor, in his red and saffron
robes, His Holiness blessed the work, and those
present of five Tibetan artists in the Contemporary
Jewels fellowship show presented by the Vermont
Studio Center of Johnson, Vermont, and lingered
appreciatively before each work.

He smiled before the playful collage of
Tenzing Rigdol, born 1982, Excuse Me Sir, Which
Way is to My Home? with its central Buddha image
and colorful background, entirely constructed
from Tibetan brocade cloths, glossy magazine ads,
and U.S. maps. He praised the artists for trans¬
forming their artistic traditions and techniques
to relate to the contemporary world.

Today, in that bright exhibition corner, the
10 paintings giving off their own light, finals-
preparing students in their parkas and Midd
sweatshirts and watch caps bustle past the art
and across the carpet on which the Dalai Lama
peacefully stood.

In a study area surrounding the basement’s
American literature section, next to a Spiderman
backpack, a female student sits on the floor, props
her back against shelves of poetry. She is unmindful
of an abandoned pillow in a white slip some inches
away on the floor.

At the end of the row, a shelf of fiction criticism
ending with these three titles: Imagining Los Angeles,
Los Angeles in Fiction , and Gillette Foamy, a travel
container of shaving soap.

Wednesday, close to cold-December midnight,
from the west passing the candle-lit windows of
Old Chapel; Davis Library looks like a Spielbergian
Mother Ship, with the star-studded, blue-black

Vermont sky overhead. Though not one of them
is visible passing the moon, 41 bikes attend the
main doors.

Sounds from the atrium: Footfalls of winter-
weight boots on slate flagstones, buzz of a motor¬
ized hole punch, metallic sword sound of a paper
cutter, the emphatic punctuation of a stapler, the
rolling wheels of a heavily laden book cart flutter¬
ing with pink-colored slips.

Downstairs in the lower level, a late-night mur¬
mur from a little knot of people in a circle of easy
chairs—behind them stands a rough, monumental
slab of rock. Muffled but animated words leak from
one of the group-study rooms ringing the area.

A female sophomore perches yards away at a
table covered by a laptop, graded short stories, a
fiction textbook, a water bottle, and a package
of Pepperidge Farm cookies. Two male political
science students at a nearby table intent on their
scrolling laptops are backdropped by periodical
shelves displaying recent issues of Die Zeit, La
Stampa, Le Monde, and the Rutland Herald.

Recycling bins overflow. Oh, the hidden words!

Two floors above, the study carrels are still well
populated at the stroke of midnight. A literature
major, surrounded by towering stacks of thesis
resources, looks up to blink bleary eyes and
refocus. She takes a swig of tea from a thermos
and extracts trail mix from a brown bag, shakes
her head to realign her thoughts back below the
surface of a poem, and is perhaps surprised there
is no apparent rattling sound.

Back in the basement behind the display win¬
dow of Special Collections, the chair, the writing
lapboard, the moth-eaten cardigan, and the marble
busts of Robert Frost may emanate a sympathetic
vibration upward toward the weary young poet
above.

Outside cold night air: smokestacker first-years
stomp on slate.

Rows and phalanxes of books on their shelves and
art and artifacts on the walls. On the second floor,
it is of the bold-handed and pigment-generous
watercolorist Arthur K. D. Healy (1902-1978),
some five large modernist landscape watercolors
and an oil portrait; he served on the faculty from
1943-1968.

“He was a hotel interiors architect before mov¬
ing to Vermont as the first artist in residence at
Middlebury,” a faculty member once commented
while pausing before one of the landscapes, then

hanging elsewhere. “One might expect to see
these paintings in a 1940s hotel room, as a matter
of fact, but he trained many successful artists here
and did much to support the Sheldon Museum.”

More historical Vermont images line the walls
and populate display cases near Special Collec¬
tions downstairs—Rutland Railroad artifacts,
enlargements of vintage Middlebury postcards,
and framed, finely inked maps of the village of
Middlebury and its surrounding town, from the
F. W. Beers Atlas of Addison County, Vermont, 1871.

Students—perhaps even history majors—walk
heedlessly past the little bygone world behind
glass on the wall, where the three buildings of
Middlebury College—Painter, Starr, and Old
Chapel—stand figuratively on the snow-white
hillside.

Behind the glass, the Rutland Railroad tracks
downtown pass the Addison County Fairgrounds,
crossing Otter Creek past the Battell Building,
Stewart Block, the Sash & Door Mill, the cot¬
ton factory, while above the west bank of the
creek, along Weybridge Street, rise the professo¬
rial edifices of President Kitchel, the Reverend
Steele, Professor Brainerd, and Professor R. D. C.
Robbins—scholar of Socrates, the books of
Moses, the Christian epistles, who would have
thoroughly enjoyed meeting His Holiness, the
14th Dalai Lama.

The population of a table upstairs in the Davis
Family Library’s Quiet Study Area, judging by
an unscientific poll of textbooks and scrawls on
yellow pads and spiral notebooks, seems to be run¬
ning neck and neck between budding biologists
and early economists, although the outcome is
skewed by the presence of a patient philosopher.

Several yards away is one of two high-tech
soundproofed cell-phone booths installed on
opposite ends of the Quiet Study Area, northeast
to southwest corners, a response in 2010 to wide¬
spread complaints about cell-phone use. The tall
black tube with sliding glass door would accom¬
modate a superhero’s costume change. But at this
early Thursday-morning hour, no peril looms but
the ticking of a clock and the reality of finals and
deadlines, and these quiet students of Middlebury
College are on their own, and what’s more, they
will survive. 13

Where should The Observer go next? Shoot us your
ideas at middma^middlebury. edu, putting the words
Observer Destination in the e-mail subject line.

Winter 2013 25

To read more and to view a video of Clemmons
performing, visit middmag.com.

Spirituals appear quite
simple and naive in print—
which is highly deceptive. To
really teach this work. I must
discuss with the class the life
of slaves and their unique
struggle. Most students have
no real perception of this
humiliating experience. And
most have no idea that the
songs often have a double
meaning: one applicable to
the Bible and its spiritual
strengths and another that
plans for insurrection and
flights to freedom.

To truly experience the
power of these songs, the
class must become a family
that feels and shares with
each other and does not
just know things intellectu¬
ally. This occurs through a
patient, understanding pro¬
cess beginning when I ask
students to share who they
are: the special character¬
istics of their families, their
chores and hobbies, and so
on. A powerful atmosphere
is built that helps establish
a tangible relationship with
every member of the class.

We become an organic,
fully functioning ensemble
with one goal; to dislodge
the secrets and inner codes
of the American Negro
Spiritual and its creators.

The students begin to know
themselves and the slaves as
a connected people. These
songs begin to express the
deeper soul. The slaves who
created this repertoire are
no longer just over there or
back there in history. Their
lives and stories live today,
and are worthy of knowing
and sharing.

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IU\'KMHa b Mock Be jjaer CTyflewraM B 03 M 0 )KH 0 CTb He TOJibKO
ncx;emaTb 3aH$miH, ho u cbmhm ynacTOBaTb b TeaTpanbHbix

nocTaHOBKax Bviecre c poccnttcKUMH Ko;uieraMH.

UpFront

ARCHIVE

To Divest?

\" uese 1;

o a rs '" u V

Row

admit one,

JUST THE TICKET

About half of the objects in the Middlebury College Archives are of unknown origin, and that’s the situation with this box
of ticket stubs, dance cards, and tiny pencils from the late 1870s through the turn of the century. Who collected them?
When were they donated to the archives? What special significance do they hold? No one knows for sure.

There are ticket stubs to the Class of 1885 Commencement Concert, the 1905 Commencement Ball, an 1878 perfor¬
mance by the Middlebury College Quartette, and the Class of 1886 Promenade Concert (Ticket: $2).

There is a blank Report of Absences listing 35 students from 1903. There are Glee Club tickets (no date) with writ¬
ing on the back. But the most alluring pieces in the collection are the dance cards from the December 1891 Junior
Promenade, each with a miniature blue or white pencil attached. Women carried the cards listing the evening’s waltzes,
polkas, quadrilles, and circle dances, while men at the prom clamored for partners. (This was two years before women
were admitted to Middlebury.)

The keepsakes were tucked inside an Allcock’s Porous Plasters box (“For Lumbago and All Pains”) when they were
donated to the College, and they are still stored that way in the Davis Family Library.

QUOTATION

“I was familiar with [the subject matter] beforehand,
but only in an academic sense. But waking up at 3 a.m. to
meet the workers at the start of their first milking shift...
put it in a whole new light.”

Elori Kramer ’ 13 , speaking to alt-weekly Seven Days about Hide, a 30-minute documentary on migrant dairy workers that
she recently produced with Peter Coccoma ’12.

Should Middlebury’s endowment contain
holdings in fossil-fuel companies? That’s a ques¬
tion that the College will be considering in 2013.
In an all-campus e-mail and on his blog, Ron on
Middlebury , President Ronald D. Liebowitz an¬
nounced in December that his administration
would convene and host panel discussions in which
the subject of divestment will take center stage.

As this magazine issue was going to press,
Liebowitz subsequently announced that the first
panel would be held on January 22 and would focus
on “two topics that lie along the ‘critical path’ for
potential changes in the College’s endowment
management policies and practices: What factors
should the College’s trustees consider in deter¬
mining whether and to what extent to place new
restrictions on the deployment of the College’s
investable wealth, and what are the pros and cons
of using divestment and/or other means to address
climate-related concerns?”

Panelists for the January 22 gathering were to
include Alice Handy, founder and president of
Investure, Middlebury’s external endowment
steward; Ralph Earle, a renewables-focused
venture investor; Mark Kritzman, an adjunct
professor in finance at MIT and prolific author
on investment-related topics; Patrick Norton, vice
president for finance and treasurer at Middlebury;
Charles Arnowitz ’13, president of the Student
Government Association; and Middlebury
Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben,
who, for the past several months, has been leading
a national campaign to encourage nonprofits to
cease investing in fossil-fuel companies.

“The management of [our] endowment is
complex and has evolved over time,” Liebowitz
wrote in his initial announcement. “We are part of
a consortium with other colleges and foundations
whose pooled resources are invested in a number
of‘fund-of-funds’ and therefore [we are] very lim¬
ited in either selecting or deleting any particular
investment within [our] portfolio.

“Despite such limitations, [we] have been work¬
ing to ensure that socially responsible investing is
discussed and reviewed as a regular and ongoing
part of the investment process.”

Liebowitz announced that approximately 3.6
percent of the College’s $900 million endow¬
ment is directly invested in companies related
to fossil fuels. At the present, the endowment
finances about 20 percent of Middlebury’s annual
operating cost.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD BALFOUR

Winter 2013 27

UpFront

[si To learn about MiddCORE, visit middcorc.iuidiIlcbury.edu.

QUOTATION

‘A powerful solar storm has the potential to
simultaneously damage multiple transformers in the
electricity grid and perhaps even bring down large
sections of it, affecting upwards of a hundred million
people in the United States for many months,
if not years.”

Yousaf Butt, a professor and scientist in residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation at the Monterey Institute
of International Studies, writing a New York Times op-ed.

MiddCORE on the Move

DOWNLOAD

Why I Love the Western

By Deborah Evans, Visiting Assistant
Professor of American Studies

It wasn’t love at first sight. As a child growing up
in early 1970s New England, whose favorite book
was Little Women , television serial Westerns and
John Wayne marathons were an enticement only to
change the channel. The genres sanctioned violence,
escapism, highly circumscribed visions of women,
and idealized version of American expansionism did
not speak to me.

High Noon changed all that. At the films climax,
Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) stands alone on
the streets of Hadleyville, awaiting a confrontation
with the Miller gang. He’s abandoned by the towns¬
people he had sworn to protect, looking scared, hag¬
gard, and uncomfortable in his own skin. The first
time I saw that now-famous crane shot, I knew this
was a different vision of what had seemed a familiar
landscape. When I learned that Carl Foreman, the
screenwriter, was under investigation by the House
Un-American Activities Committee while working
on High Noon, the questions that the film asks—Who
does one trust? What is worth defending?—took on a
deeper significance. I saw the film reflecting the na¬
tional concerns and anxieties not just of that dusty
19th-century frontier town but also of the moment in
which it was made.

Many Westerns—from The Wild Bunch to Ballad of
Little Jo to Django Unchained— operate similarly. On
one level, these films explore the racial, sexual, and po¬
litical tensions of their cultural moments. Sometimes
it’s easier to see our society’s flaws and insecurities
through a hazy historical curtain like the one that
the Western offers. That’s what keeps me watching.

A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR

ago, Jessica Holmes began
to field a series of phone calls
about MiddCORE, the ex¬
periential-learning program
she directs at the College
each winter term. The calls
were from peers at other
institutions who wanted to
know: How could they build
a MiddCORE of their own?

What were the secrets behind
the program’s success?

“So I thought, ‘we could
tell others how to do it, or we
can look at the possibility of
expanding,”’ Holmes says. “And if we do it,” added
the econ prof with a smile, “we continue to benefit
from the market niche we created.”

Jump ahead to 2013, and the flagship course
has indeed branched out to include two sections
at Middlebury each winter, a summer internship
program in Vermont (called MiddCOREplus), a
winter term course at the Monterey Institute, and a
four-week summer immersion experience at Sierra
Nevada College on the shores of Lake Tahoe. The
program at Sierra Nevada begins this summer and
will be the first MiddCORE program to take place
on a non-Middlebury campus.

“Sierra Nevada College is a small, intimate place
that will be very attractive to students as well as
to mentors,” Holmes says, noting that the region
serves as a bedroom community for many Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs.

Like the program in Vermont (and at Monterey),
summer immersion in Nevada will feature

workshops and hands-on challenges designed to
foster innovation and hone leadership skills, all
under the tutelage of the aforementioned men¬
tors (performers, venture capitalists, start-up
entrepreneurs, and the like).

What will be different is that the Sierra Nevada
program is open to students and recent graduates
from any college or university, not just Middlebury.
“We expect to attract students from traditional
liberal arts colleges, but we also hope to hear from
people at engineering schools, at design schools, at
large research institutions, in the U.S. and abroad,”
Holmes says. (In fact, an Oxford student submitted
the first application.)

“And, honestly, no two MiddCOREs are ever
the same,” she adds. “The mentors may be dif¬
ferent; the challenges are different; the failures,
the solutions—all different. And that’s the way
it should be.”

28 Middlebury magazine

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SIERRA NEVADA COLLEGE

FACT F I N D E R

Midd Notes

Percentage of orches¬
tra consisting of string
instruments

Percentage of violinists
who are freshmen

Percentage of student
brass players who are
freshmen or sophomores

The Middlebury College Orchestra, under the direction of conduc¬
tor Andrew Massey, consists of 47 musicians andperforms publicly
four times a year—in November, January, March, and April
This year, 47 musicians play violins, violas, cellos, a double bass,
flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns, trumpets, trombones,
a tuba, a harp, and a timpani, and their repertoire includes Beethoven,
Mozart, Copland, as well as new work from some of Middleburys
own composers.

Sound of Midd

The orchestra’s April concert
will feature work by
Middlebury alumnus
Nicholas Tkach ’11 and
student life residential adviser
Pete Fitton ’13.

Number of seniors in the 47-person
orchestra

Age at which the concertmaster.
Alexander St. Angelo ’14, began
studying the violin

Number of times conductor
Andrew Massey has appeared
in concert with virtuoso cellist
Rostropovich

The Choice

Each January, the orchestra holds
a competitive audition (the Alan and Joyce
Beucher Concerto Competition) open
to instrumentalists and vocalists in the
student body, with the winner selected to
perform in the spring concert.

^ Total members
£1 Non-students

Though the College orchestra is comprised
primarily of students, membership is open
to faculty, staff, and other community
musicians. Though the percentage is not
large—and is not designed to be—these
performers serve an important purpose,
providing not only depth and expertise, but
mentoring, as well.

Winter20/j 29

DIALOGUE

EAST VIEW

In November, the Chinese
Communist Party held its
18 th congress, which saw
Hu Jintao step down as
Party general secretary to
be replaced by Xi Jinping.
We turned to two China
experts—Don Wyatt, the
John M. McCardell Jr.
Distinguished Professor of
History, and Jessica Teets,
an assistant professor of
political science—and asked
them to discuss what this

JESSICA: I’ve been amazed at how quickly the Chinese
Communist Party has institutionalized a process of
peaceful transition of power, using mandatory retire¬
ment ages, that changed the violent factionalism under
Mao into the peaceful factionalism seen now. This recent
transition of power has illustrated this factionalism in
that Jiang Zemin’s faction really dominated the selection
of top Politburo positions over Hu’s—this is one of the
most conservative Politburos installed since Deng, with
a dearth of minority and female representation. The con¬
servative nature of the new leadership makes me doubt if
there will be any meaningful progress on political or eco¬
nomic reform under Xi Jinping unless he is able to bring
some more liberal elements into key leadership roles.

Well, in my view, the simple reduction in Politburo size from its maximum of
nine members down to its minimum of seven is always indicative of a conserva¬
tive turn in governance—in the spirit of a “cut off the branches, strengthen the
trunk” strategy. One has to remember that each of the members of this body is
autonomous, controlling his own bailiwick: Even as president, Xi Jinping can
neither dismiss nor demote any of the other members. They are vested with all
state power as a group, and all of China either soars under them as a collective
or sinks under them.

DON: I agree with you about the unusual seamlessness of this
transition, though this result was complicated somewhat in advance
by the Bo Xilai affair (and the corruption concerns it brought into
high relief) and also that strange disappearance from public view by
Xi Jinping, given that he was predicted to be and has now become
the main man.

You are also correct in viewing Jiang Zemin’s faction as having tri¬
umphed over that of Hu Jintao, with one clear indicator being how'
each of the seven comprising the Politburo is a former metropolitan
mayor or provincial governor or both, with extensive executive, as
opposed to purely technocratic, experience. To me, this commonal¬
ity of experience harbingers a highly pragmatic—and non-ideologi-
cal—approach to China’s looming challenges. Ironically, one of the
most prominent of those challenges is precisely what is represented
by the cohesion of this newly emergent group of successors—namely,
factionalism. I somehow' don’t think that is going to go away or even
diminish anytime soon.

I agree that “these uncertain times” are driving a lot of this turn to conser¬
vatism—namely, the slowing economy in China, increasing social unrest, and
factional battles like those seen with Bo Xilai’s demotion. Income inequality
and corruption cause social unrest and the party seems to respond by the use of
more repression and a conservative leadership body. This year the spending on
domestic security outstripped national defense spending! But do you think that
the reworking of the Politburo from nine to seven members is part of this turn
tow ard conservatism, or part of a larger effort over the last 20 years to improve
governance in China?

Good point. I wonder if in fact the incident with Bo Xilai (and
bizarre trial of his wife for the murder of Neil Haywood) contributed
to the sudden conservative turn of the group of Politburo mem¬
bers. Many analysts expected that more liberal reformers would
also be added—namely party organization department head Li
Yuanchao and Guangdong party chief Wang Yang. However, these
two proteges of Hu Jintao were passed over, supposedly due to their
relative youth and opposition from conservative party elders. The
scandal with Bo and his reputation as a reformer (although not a
liberal reformer but more of a neo-Maoist) might have empowered
Li Peng and Jiang Zemin’s conservative faction over the more liberal
factions.

I wonder if Hu’s focus on income inequality as part of
Harmonious Society policies will continue. China is currently one
of the most unequal countries in the world, and inequality ranks up
there wdth corruption in the factors that party officials are afraid will
destroy the party.

I certainly would not discount administrative
streamlining as a contributing motive behind the
reduction in Politburo size. However, inasmuch as
the recently expressed goals of future reform are
to establish a better relationship between party
organizations and governmental institutions and
the people as well as to control corruption, one
can hardly doubt that the smaller Politburo is very
definitely thought to be also in the interest of the
latter aims. Also, your revelation that spending
on domestic security has just outpaced national
defense spending is news to me and must be a
first. It suggests that no matter how conscientious
it will be in fortifying itself against the escalating
interregional storm of territorial disputes with
Japan, the Philippines, and others resulting from
the “peaceful rise” policy, China’s new' leadership
w ill be equally conscientious in preparing for its
own defense against any coming domestic storm.

30 Middlebury magazine

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE CIARDIELLO

UpFront

FS!V To watch Do As I Say. visitvimeo.com/52385029.
LSI To go behind the scenes of the film, visit
go.middlebury.edu/behindsleepless.

PICTURE

Blue Paint. Last summer, Esme Lutz ’13 traveled to Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, India, where she interned with the
Rehwa Society, a nonprofit established to promote regional craft and provide employment for women. Her photographs
documenting the experience have been used in Rehwa promotional materials and were on exhibit this fall at the student-
run M Gallery off campus. “Photography serves as a means to transcend barriers both spatial and temporal,” Lutz says.
“A medium beyond language, it allows the viewer to intimately gain access to corners of the world not yet encountered,
thereby creating connections.”

All Day, All Night

New cinematic ground was not broken in
Do As I Say , Middlebury’s entry in the Vermont
International Film Festival’s “Sleepless in
Burlington” competition. But as an eight-minute
drama that was conceived, written, cast, shot,
and edited within a 24-hour time frame, all while
incorporating contest-required elements (a line
from a Phish song, a street mural in Burlington)?
Well, let’s just say this tale of a good father gone
bad is pretty damn compelling.

Written by David Seamans ’13, directed by
Hunter Nolan ’13, filmed by Zachary Doleac ’13,
edited by Matthew Lennon ’13, with sound design
by Michael Gadomski ’13, Do As I Say packs a fair
amount of complexity into a fairly straightforward
morality tale.

Seamans’ script begins with a subtle misdirec¬
tion—the troubled family you meet at the outset
and the kind, advice-wielding father figure are not
quite as they seem. And Lennon’s editing proves
to be sound, deftly weaving the two narratives
strands together until they intersect at the end

of the short. (That this editing was done under
such a time crunch with no allowance for reshoots
or script adjustment makes the feat even more
impressive.)

Says writer Seamans of the experience: “I’ve
done creative marathon projects for writing be¬
fore, but what’s incredible about marathon film
competitions is that anything ends up working
at all. There’s so much technology, so much craft,
and far too many interlocking parts (and not
nearly enough time to coordinate it all), that the
final product is nothing short of a small miracle.”

Seamans adds that if he had the chance to do
anything differently, he would “make sure the
script didn’t rely on intricate actions too much
because those were the first things to get cut when
we were running out of time.”

But in the end, he says, “we had a team that
really clicked.”

Now, imagine what these five filmmakers could
do with, say, a 30-minute film and a month of
production time.

NUMBERS

About two years ago, the College launched a fund-raising
effort that pairs microphilanthropy with online crowd¬
sourcing-think Kickstarter for the higher-ed set. Donors
are able to target specific projects they would like to fund,
and students have a tool to raise money for entrepreneurial
efforts. This new fund-raising venture, called MiddSTART,
can also be used to create MiddSTART student scholar¬
ships. Before a project can be posted to the MiddSTART
page, students must submit an application that is reviewed
by the Project on Creativity and Innovation and College
Advancement.

NUMBER OF STUDENT PROJECTS CURRENTLY
SEEKING FUNDING

NUMBER OF SCHOLARSHIPS SEEKING FUNDING

NUMBER OF ALTERNATIVE" SPRING-BREAK
TRIPS SEEKING FUNDING

STUDENT PROJECT TO CREATE A PROTEIN BAR
MADE OF CRICKETS

MIDDSTART DONATIONS SINCE LAUNCH

Winter20/3 31

Ski Nation Comes to Vermont

Middle bury’s ski facilities, the Snow Bowl and the Rikert Nordic Center, have
welcomed the regions finest collegiate teams and skiers—including many future
Olympians—over the years. This March, the nations best intercollegiate skiers will
descend on Vermont and the Colleges two ski sites as the Bowl and Rikert host the
2013 NCAA Championships.

32 Middlebury magazine

mapi

UpFront

0 TRAIL SETTING

All of the Nordic champion¬
ship races—the 5k and 10k
classical and 15k and 20k
freestyle—will take place
on the Tormondsen Family
Race Trail. Middlebury is the
only college in the country
with a trail certified at the
highest level.

O FIELDS OF FROST

Rikert has 25 groomed
trails covering 50km,
including the Frost Fields
loop. One of the more
remote trails, the Frost
loop, located in the north¬
ern region of Rikert, takes
skiers right past the Robert
Frost Cabin.

0 CAN YOU HEAR
ME NOW?

There’s no cell-phone
reception at Rikert, so if
folks need to make a call,
they’ll have to make like
Clark Kent and pop into
the phone booth a stone’s
throw away from the tour¬
ing center.

0 IT S ALL DOWN¬
HILL FROM HERE

The alpine races will take
place just up the road at
the Snow Bowl. Men’s and
women’s giant slalom will
be on the Allen Trail (verti¬
cal drop 250m); the slalom
will be on Ross (vertical
156m).

0 LAKE EFFECT

Located just off the Long
Trail, Lake Pleiad is one
of the highest lakes in
Vermont and a favorite
hiking destination and
swimming spot. Save your
dips for summer, though:
the water might be a wee
bit chilly this time of year.

0 FUELING STATION

The Bowl’s Starr Shelter
is a great place to escape
the chill, especially if you
can find a spot by the
roaring fire in the giant
stone fireplace. And you
don’t want to forgo soup in
a bread bowl, a must-have
on a cold day.

Winter 2013 33

Interview with President Liebowitz

Language History

In higher education, language learning is synonymous
with Middlebury. For nearly a century, the College has
held unique status as an unquestioned leader in inten¬
sive, immersive, language instruction. We recently spoke
to President Liebowitz about how this came to be, how
language instruction at Middlebury has evolved, and
where we are headed in the future.

How did this legacy begin?

We happened to have been the fortunate receptors
of a bizarre idea in 1915, which was to replicate Ger¬
many at a time when the country was out of reach
to individuals because of World War I.

For about three years, a Vassar professor named
Lilian Stroebe had been looking for a remote loca¬
tion in the United States where she could establish
a school for learning German. She had very specific
needs—which is why she had been looking for three
years—that included the necessary infrastructure to
house, feed, and instruct students, yet be situated
in a place where there would be few, if any, distrac¬
tions. Her plan was predicated on total learning
immersion, where students would eat, sleep, live,
and breathe German.

Poughkeepsie wouldn’t work; it was a bustling
mill town at the time. So she searched. And in 1915,
a colleague of hers was taking a train ride through
the Champlain Valley and saw buildings under con¬
struction on a hilltop; a fellow passenger told her
that she was looking at Middlebury College. This
colleague had found Stroebe’s ideal location. Fortu¬
nately for us, Middlebury President John Thomas
saw the wisdom in Stroebe’s idea and granted her
the right to begin the Middlebury German School.
Schools in French and Spanish followed soon after.

How was this received at the College?

Well, it challenged the status quo of what was going
on at four-year liberal arts colleges, this idea of utiliz¬
ing the campus during the summer for educational
purposes. And a Vassar professor proposed it; so it
wasn’t organic or homegrown. And, I believe there
was a concern that it would dilute or minimize the
role of the September to May academic program.

In any case, President Thomas and the board
argued that it was worth the experiment. By em¬
bracing the notion of total language immersion and
by establishing what was really a separate entity for
older, post-baccalaureate students, which was open
only during the summer months... you can reason¬
ably say that this was one of the most important
decisions in the history of the College. It launched
the College’s “international” efforts and broadened
Middlebury’s horizons in many ways.

Was it deliberate to enroll only older students?
Yes. At the beginning—and for several decades
after—the Language Schools were populated almost
entirely by students who were pursuing or going to
pursue graduate degrees. And once the Schools were
well established, by the time of Stephen Freeman’s
tenure as vice president, oversight of the Language
Schools was quite separate from the rest of the
institution, even though we are a small college.

34 Middlebury magazine

ILLUSTRATION BY BRETT RYDER

UpFront

When Freeman was vice president (the 1940s),
there were fewer than 1,000 students on this cam¬
pus, yet the summer Language Schools enrolled
more than 1,000 students during this period. This
was a program that was set up for a different cohort
of learners, with more than 90 percent of them
pursuing master’s degrees.

Let’s talk about the fact that there is not a
“Middlebury method”...

Right, but there is a Middlebury way: intensively
immerse the student in the target language and
culture; provide that student with the best teachers
possible; have that student eat, sleep, and breathe
the foreign language; provide a cocurricular pro¬
gram that reinforces the way you communicate;
and reinforce it with the Language Pledge—every
student signs it and thereby pledges to speak only
the target language while in the program (24/7 for
the entire session). The Language Pledge is the
defining characteristic of language learning at
Middlebury. It’s what has set us apart—it’s how we
became established as language leaders.

What’s interesting about this approach is that it
was a key component of Stroebe’s vision; it’s why she
chose such a remote location as Middlebury. But
during the first several decades, I’m not sure how
much of a challenge the Pledge was because, remem¬
ber, the learners were graduate students then. There
was some proficiency in language among them all.
Immersion was essential to learning, absolutely, but
everyone coming to the Language Schools had some
facility with the language they were studying when
they arrived. This changed with the introduction of
some older student “beginners” in some Schools, but
the numbers were small. But that began to change.

By the time I spent my first year at the Russian
School (more than 30 years ago), the Language
Pledge was in full force and quite noticeable. I was
taking beginning Russian, and I can tell you, it was
brutal not being able to communicate easily. But
there’s no better way to learn a language.

So when did this enrollment philosophy change?
It was a decisive choice in the 1970s, one that co¬
incided with the advent and rise of study abroad
for undergraduates. We had been running schools
abroad, in language, for graduate students for years,
beginning in Paris in 1949. But by the 1960s, a
movement arose in undergraduate education that
spending one’s junior year abroad was a good way to
expand the horizons of our students. Since we had
the schools in place to serve the graduate students
enrolled in our Language Schools, it was logical to
use those programs to serve undergraduates , too. But
still, the philosophy was to commit our students to

total language immersion. This means we had to
better prepare these students; they would have to
be able to speak the language at a certain level of
proficiency when they went abroad, which, in turn,
led to increased interest in undergraduate enrollment
in the Language Schools. More than 150 Middlebury
undergraduates now enroll in the Language Schools
each summer, most before leaving for their intensive,
immersive junior year or semester abroad.

Now, there was a fear among some at the Lan¬
guage Schools that undergraduates, specifically
beginners, would change the immersion atmosphere
and weaken the effectiveness of the Schools; that is,
beginners would make total immersion impossible.
But that proved not to be the case.

We now have 37 sites abroad, but one thing that
hasn’t changed is full language immersion.

Right. One of our challenges in our study abroad
philosophy is that students are expected to
sign a Language Pledge when they go abroad to
Middlebury schools. In most of our programs,
they are immersed in the target language, learn¬
ing among local students, native speakers. They’re
not just taking a French class. They’re taking a his¬
tory class, in French; politics, economics, art his¬
tory, and so on, in French. On the one hand, that
creates the ability for students to take so-called
“content” courses in language. It’s so valuable to
learn this way, and it is unusual, too. But it’s excru¬
ciatingly difficult and challenging. You’re living in
a new environment, and it takes a while to adjust,
even if the best language teachers prepare you. It’s
an eye-opening experience for most students and,
I should add, potentially frustrating. So there are
mixed emotions among our students about study
abroad. It’s not what you see in the movies: junior-
year abroad in Paris, enjoying the finer parts of
French culture while still studying in English. Our
approach is very challenging, but the rewards on
many fronts are clear and often come later.

For some, the trade-off can be the enjoyment
factor. We’re wrestling with this feedback we’re
getting from our students. They typically attain a far
greater degree of linguistic growth and competency
than students in other programs, but a number of
them, to be honest, will say that their time abroad
is not as fun as others. And that’s something for us
to wrestle with; kids want to have fun. Surprise! It’s
a balancing act.

What about the impact of the Language Schools
on the undergraduate curriculum? Japanese
wasn’t taught until the Japanese School opened...
And Chinese, and Arabic, and Modern Hebrew. The
evolution of the Language Schools and the selection

of the new ones—starting with the opening of the
Chinese School in 1966—mirror and reflect the
demands coming out of the undergraduate College.

John Berninghausen, who built our undergraduate
Chinese department and is now an emeritus profes¬
sor, will tell you that the Language Schools brought
excellence to many of our language departments.
Our undergraduate language departments are among
the best in the country because we’ve had a huge
advantage of having decades of experience coming
from the Language Schools to the undergraduate
College. It has had a profound impact on the quality
of our undergraduate language instruction.

So, where are we headed?

We need to continue to perfect and improve
upon our pedagogy that deals with face-to-face
instruction, plus develop online content, provid¬
ing a viable hybrid approach to learning.

We’re very good at bricks-and-mortar teaching
and learning; we’ve been doing it at a very high level
for close to 100 years. We’re also developing our
online capabilities—and within this, we’re finding
that the demand for a hybrid approach is great. Face-
to-face instruction combined with excellent online
content that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.

Ten years from now, bricks and mortar will still be
incredibly important and central to certain types of
learning. But rich, authentic, high-quality, immer¬
sive, online content will be essential. There’s great
demand from students who have gained a whole
year in linguistic competency during an intensive
summer language session to retain their proficiency
And unless you are going to immerse yourself in a
country where the language is spoken, or return to
the Language School, you will not find an equivalent
academic environment than what quality online
material can provide.

And then there is the hybrid approach. We will
need to continue to develop pedagogies that em¬
brace both in-person and online learning in a way
that each complements the other. We can’t predict
with any confidence how things will look more than
a few years out. In the 1990s, the College engaged in
creating multimedia content for language teaching
in a broad, systematic way. But technology was the
inhibitor to innovation in pedagogy Today, technol¬
ogy has evolved and advanced so greatly it no longer
serves as the inhibitor, but is the facilitator of new
approaches to learning. Yet, the current technology
will evolve further, making online learning even
more natural, appealing, and effective to students.
We need to be prepared to take advantage of such
changes if we wish to retain our leadership position
in the teaching of language and culture and prepare
our students for life beyond Middlebury. □

Winter 2013 35

LANGUAGE IN DEPTH

What is the Meaning of'Meaning”?

By John Spackman, Illustrations by Heads of State

What is the meaning of “meaning”? This apparently recondite question,
posed by the philosopher Hilary Putnam in a seminal 1975 paper, actually lies
at the core of the branch of linguistics known as semantics. How we answer
this question will have important implications for a variety of issues that
are currently hotly debated in linguistics, such as whether some concepts
are innate, whether different languages create different styles of thought or
experience (linguistic determinism), how languages are learned, and so on.
In the second half of the 20th century, the prevalent commonsense view of
meaning faced a number of serious challenges, but none was as potentially
revolutionary as that raised by Putnam and other similarly minded philoso¬
phers of language.

I always begin my Philosophy of Language course by asking students what
they take to be “the meaning of‘meaning,’” and the most common initial
response is, in short, that meaning is something in the head. The meaning
of a sentence like “It’s six pm in Denver now” is a thought in the mind of
the speaker, presumably the thought that right now the time in Denver is
six pm; the meaning of a word, for instance “cauliflower,” is the speaker’s
concept of that thing. This view is a very commonsensical one for us today,
and also one with a long historical pedigree. The 17th century philosopher
John Locke held that a man’s words “stand as marks for the ideas in his own
mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of
men’s minds be conveyed from one to another.”

But Putnam and other philosophers, such as Saul Kripke, raised deep-seated
objections to the idea theory, objections whose implications philosophers
and linguists are still trying to unravel. Putnam’s challenge takes the form of
a thought experiment involving a make-believe planet called “Twin Earth.”
Imagine, he says, that somewhere in the universe there is a planet that is,
with one exception, molecule for molecule identical with Earth. On Twin
Earth there are twin trees and twin rocks. There are even doppelgangers of
you and me, who speak something that sounds just like English. The only
difference between the two planets is that on Twin Earth, the lakes and
rivers don’t contain H 2 0, but a substance with a different chemical formula
we can abbreviate XYZ. XYZ is, to the naked eye, indistinguishable from
H 2 0 , and Twin Earthians drink it, cook with it, and even call it by the same
sound we use, “water.”

But, Putnam asks, what does the Twin Earthian word “water” mean? Clearly,
it does not mean water. After all, water is H z O, not XYZ; a substance with
a different chemical formula would not be called water. But—and here’s the
rub—this difference of meaning would exist even if Person A on Earth and
Twin Person A on Twin Earth were exactly identical in terms of what’s “in

their heads.” Suppose that it’s the year 1750 (Earth time), and no one on either
Earth or Twin Earth has any understanding of chemical composition. Person
A and Twin Person A will then share all the same beliefs about their respec¬
tive liquids: that it’s clear, odorless, thirst-quenching on a summer’s day, and
so on. But even so, the meaning of Twin Person A’s term “water” cannot be
water, for this term refers to XYZ, not H z O. Person A’s and Twin Person A’s
“concepts” of these substances are identical, and yet the meanings of their
terms are different. So meanings cannot just be concepts. As Putnam puts
it, “Cut the pie any way you like, ‘meaning’ just ain’t in the head!”

Or, at any rate, not wholly in the head. Putnam’s proposal is actually that
the meaning of most words includes two components: one that is not in the
head, the word’s extension, or the things to which it applies (in the case of
water, H z O); and one that is in the head, the word’s “stereotype.” This may
seem, to put it mildly, surprising. How could H z O itself be part of the meaning
of “water” in 1750, before anyone knew that water was H z O? Putnam’s idea
is that “water”, and indeed most words, are actually akin to indexical words
like “this,” “that,” and “now,” whose meaning depends on context. What I
mean when I say “that” depends on whether I’m pointing to my cat or my
car, and if I’m pointing to my cat, what I mean is the cat itself In a similar
way, the meaning of “water” “reaches out” to encompass the actual stuff in
the world to which the word refers, even if the speaker doesn’t fully know
the nature of that stuff.

Putnam’s view of meaning has sparked a great deal of controversy since it
was proposed, but it has had a tremendous influence. What are its implica¬
tions? What it means for broader questions concerning, for instance, the
innateness of language and linguistic determinism, is still very much a subject
of debate. However these specific issues are decided, this new perspective
has suggested to many a broad reorientation of our way of thinking about the
relationship between the mind and the world. The idea theory of meaning,
by picturing meaning as something wholly within the speaker’s head, in a
sense separates the mind from the world. On Putnam’s view, the meanings
we grasp with our minds encompass things outside the mind, which suggests
we should think of the mind as fundamentally open to the world, rather than
closed in on itself.

For those who accept Putnam’s argument, there is much work to be done
in order to understand what exactly this means about the nature of human
subjectivity and its relation to the world. \S\

John Spackman is an associate professor of philosophy. He teaches a course at
Middlebury titled “Philosophy of Language. ”

Winter 2013 37

The Digital Scene

By Matt Jennings

In the late 1980s, when Jane Swift arrived as a freshman at Trinity
College in Hartford, Connecticut, after attending public schools in western
Massachusetts, she says it didn’t take long before she noticed a “vibrant,
Technicolor gap” between her precollegiate preparation and those of her
peers who had attended private schools; it was most pronounced, she says,
in the realm of language education.

I have this distinct recollection of having a steeper learning curve,” says
Swift, the former Massachusetts governor and current CEO of Middle-
bury Interactive Languages (MIL), the joint commercial venture between
Middlebury College and K12, Inc. “It opened my eyes, and it later became my
focus in public office and in the private sector: how can we better facilitate
access to high-quality education in the United States? Technology and its
innovative applications seemed to be this untapped area where we could
vastly broaden our reach in an affordable way.”

And this access—or lack of it—has had a profound impact on language
learning, says Middlebury President Ron Liebowitz. “There is a huge language
gap in the United States, a crisis in terms of the number of people who are
proficient in foreign languages,” he says. “We’re not adequately preparing our
next generation; students typically need to wait until the age of 18 to begin
the study of language in any serious way. That’s a problem.”

With education budgets being slashed across the country—according to a
recent analysis by the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
35 states are spending less per pupil than they were five years ago—there
likely will be fewer language instructors in this country’s public schools in
the years ahead, not more.

While this trend may be troubling, many agree with Swift that an inno¬
vative technological approach would not only lessen the impact but would
also make language learning in our nation’s public schools more effective.

“A comprehensive online solution is everyone’s holy grail,” Phil Hubbard, a
senior lecturer in linguistics at Stanford, told the Pacific Standard magazine’s
Bonnie Tsui for a story titled, “What’s the Secret to Learning a Second
Language?” “A lot of people developing these programs have a good idea, but
no particular experience in language teaching,” he added. “They leverage one
part of it, but don’t do the other parts well.”

It was with this in mind that Middlebury partnered with K12 to launch
MIL in 2010. K12 is a leader in educational technology and would bring
the digital expertise; Middlebury language instructors would design the
curriculum, and, most important, would attempt to translate Middlebur/s
century-old intensive immersion philosophy to the online realm.

“The drill-and-kill approach... doesn’t work,” Vice President of Language
Schools Michael Geisler told Tsui for the Pacific Standard story. “Scripted
dialogue and picture association... [are] not going to teach you the language.”

“Contextualized learning is the key,” Geisler told me in a conversation
we had in December about the development of the programs. “We spent a
lot of time talking about how to introduce this philosophy into an online
curriculum,” he said.

By contextualization, Geisler means using clues that come from the
context of the experience to acquire the information one needs to truly
understand a language. He considers this to be one of four key principles to
language learning. To attain contextualization online, MIL has developed
video tutorials and virtual worlds using authentic material that will provide
students with body-language clues, recognizable surroundings, and visual

and verbal tone. “We’re trying to teach students to look for what they know
(cognates, creative guesses),” Geisler said. “Not for what they don’t know.”

Geisler acknowledged that contextualization doesn’t come as easily
online as it does face-to-face. In person, if you say something, you can see
instantly how your message was received. (“As the German poet Heinrich
Heine wrote, ‘Once the arrow has left the bow, it is no longer the archer’s,”’
Geisler noted.) Facial recognition isn’t as intuitive in a virtual world, though
Geisler added that by using an application such as Skype to communicate
with an instructor or a peer, this disadvantage is greatly lessened.

This speaks to another of the four key language-learning principles, inter¬
action with others. (The other two are using the language and using it for a
purpose.) “But online, you can do it at your own pace, which is very useful
for people with different learning styles,” Geisler explained.

“Think about the shy student, the student who needs more time. This
person can ease into interaction online at their own pace, when they are

38 Middlebury magazine

LANGUAGE IN DEPTH

more comfortable. They’re not under the same pressure they would be in a
traditional classroom. Of course, when they are more comfortable, we do
want them to seek out this personal interaction.”

I asked Geisler about the traditional classroom. Is there a concern that if
this online model is as successful as they believe it will be, it will hasten attri¬
tion among foreign language instructors? That is, will machine replace man?

“Not if things go right,” he said. “We see online learning as providing more
foreign language resources in a more cost-effective manner. Once school
districts find out that they can deploy teachers more efficiently, to reach
larger numbers of students, there will be an incentive for bringing back some
languages that are currently threatened by tight budgets.”

MIL offers three delivery models—a stand-alone model, a supplemental
model that a student may use at home to enhance his or her classroom in¬
struction, and a hybrid approach in which the foreign language instructor
incorporates online learning into his or her curriculum. Geisler and others

“There is a huge language gap
in the United States,
a crisis in terms of the number
of people who are proficient
in foreign languages

believe that the hybrid approach is the most effective way to learn a language.
But the supplemental and stand-alone models exist for a reason. The hybrid
approach may be optimal, but if it’s not feasible within certain schools,
providing students with other options is better than having no options at all.

“Think about it this way,” Jane Swift says. “Let’s say you have access to
the very best teacher possible. Well, you can never replace that. But let’s say
you don’t have that teacher as an option. Let’s say your school is going to cut
Spanish. Or let’s say you want to learn Russian and your school doesn’t offer
it. We can replicate that instruction in a fashion.”

She continues: “We can give you a quality learning experience —whenever
you want it and at your own pace. It might not be the same as having that
specific teacher in your classroom, but how many schools have that? Fewer
and fewer. For those that don’t, we can help fill that void and close that gap.
And for those that do, well, these programs will only make that instruction
even better.” □

Winter 2013 39

LANGUAGE IN DEPTH

•.Y\oT Q.^T

Living with dyslexia

By Dylan Redford ’14, as told to Matt Jennings

The time that stands out to me, the time when I first realized that I was
different, was when I was in the third grade.

At my school, all of the kids in the third grade were asked to read a chil¬
dren’s book to the first graders. This program instilled a very real sense of, I
don’t know, superiority, I guess. The age difference between first and third
grade isn’t great, but in third grade you can read; it was a differentiator.
Reading was imbedded into that sense of identity as a third grader; we were
the “big kids,” and we were going to demonstrate it by doing something the
first graders couldn’t.

Up until this point, I don’t think I had a full understanding that I couldn’t
read like my classmates. I just knew that it was hard, and that was the extent
of it. I thought it was like that for everybody. But when it came time for us
to choose our books, I remember kids choosing these chapter books, the
Magic Tree House series, to show off their reading chops; or maybe they were
picking more simple books they had been able to read for a while, books that
the first-graders were just learning to read.

So I went that route, picking The Cat in the Hat—ex cept I couldn’t read
it. I knew what the story was about because my parents always read to me
at bedtime, and I had a pretty good visual memory of the book. I knew how
many words there were on a page. The pictures somewhat corresponded with
the words, and I could remember the pictures. So up until “reading day” I
would have my parents read me that book, and I would try and memorize
the story. I would try to remember the words that they were saying.

And then it came time to read the book aloud to the first-graders. And it
was right then, when I was sweating, my hands shaking, fumbling for words
. .. that’s when I knew. These kids were correcting me. They could read it.
And I couldn’t.

That’s when it dawned on me that there was this structure, this hierarchy
in the educational world—third-graders should be able to do things that
first-graders couldn’t—and I didn’t have a place in it.

I was given the diagnosis in the fourth grade, and it came with such a
profound sense of relief. Up until that point, I just felt that I wasn’t smart
enough; I couldn’t do what the teachers felt I could do. So getting the diag¬
nosis—that was the ultimate clarification that I was different, but that was
good. Suddenly, there was a category that I fit into; I wasn’t alone.

Being diagnosed as dyslexic immediately gave me a sense of what my
strengths were and what my weaknesses were. To get these laid out for me
was so important because it told me that, OK, there are things I’m going to
stru ggl e with, but there are also things that I won’t struggle with. Before, I

had no confidence; I just assumed everything would be a struggle.

I was so lucky that my mom was a teacher, because she never had the belief
that there were “normal” kids and there were kids who didn’t fit that defini¬
tion. She sees each kid as an individual learner. The concept that there’s a
standard student and there’s a student who needs accommodations is ridicu¬
lous because there is no “standard” student. She inherently understood that.
Up until my diagnosis, I might have felt alone at school, but never at home.

In high school, I loved studio art, and I think it was expected that because
I was dyslexic and because I was good at art, that I’d go to art school. But I
saw this as a copout, I saw this as running away from my dyslexia, of conform¬
ing to others’ beliefs in what I could or couldn’t do. I had this deep drive to
prove to people that I could do academics. I was going to go to a rigorous
liberal arts school! And then I was going to be a history major!

When I got here, I felt like Middlebury had taken a risk with me; I was a
risky investment. I mean, I knew what I could do, but how could they know
for sure? I had bad SAT scores, and I probably spelled some stuff wrong on
the application. So I put pressure on myself to prove that kids with learning
disabilities, kids who don’t do well on the SATs, can contribute a lot to the
community—they can be creators, innovators.

At first I thought that meant excelling in areas I wouldn’t normally excel in
and limiting myself to one studio art course a semester—things like that. And
I did well. But then I wondered, Why am I not doing what I really want to
do? I remember being told that I was going to reach a point in my life when
I’d be able to do the things that I wanted to do, that I wouldn’t always have
to work so hard to overcome my learning difference.

But there’s no guy standing on the corner saying, “You know that point?
It’s happening right now.” You have to come to that realization yourself, and
I think this is especially difficult for people with learning differences. When
do you shed off that stuff that you have to do?

I think I’ve spent a long time feeling not so great about myself; there are
self-esteem issues deeply embedded in working within other people’s expec¬
tations. And if you are not doing what you really want to do, not playing to
your strengths, then the validation you receive is completely external, and
you never feel satisfied.

I’m still working through it. But I’m a studio art major now, though I might
minor in history.

Living with dyslexia... it’s hard. But from my experience, you have to own
it. It’s who I am. It’s always going to be me. Understanding this is essential
in order to be happy as a human being. □

40 Middlebury magazine

Why the Nation Needs a
Strategic Language Reserve

By Michael Geisler

On November i, 1941, a little over a month before Pearl Harbor and
America’s entry into World War II, the U.S. Army opened a secret facility
in an abandoned airplane hangar at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The
purpose of this enterprise was to create a cadre of experts who could speak
Japanese. After the war, the new language training center, now known as the
Defense Language Institute, moved to Minnesota and eventually found a
permanent home at the historic Presidio of Monterey.

In times of war, we always seem to remember the need for people to talk
to other people in a language they can truly understand—their own. Unfor¬
tunately, without the threat of war, Americans—like the former president
of Harvard and former secretary of the treasury Larry Summers—seem to
believe that foreign languages are a waste of time and resources because the
rest of the world, if they want to talk to us, can be expected to do so in English.

Yet even people who realize that the overwhelming majority of the
world’s population does not speak English, and that even those who do
speak English can often communicate in that language only on a very basic
level of proficiency, add to the problem by joining the stampede for what
I like to call “the critical language du jour.” The people who jump on these
particular bandwagons seem to be unaware of the fact that their behavior
is that of lemmings. In the 1960s and 1970s, following the Sputnik crisis of
i 957 > everybody was supposed to be learning Russian. In the 1990s there
was a spike in Japanese (remember Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun and all
those courses on Japanese business ethics?) and German (following the fall
of the Berlin Wall, when people were afraid of the rise of a “Fourth Reich”!).

While the Arabic School at Middlebury was established in 1982, on a
national scale Arabic remained one of the “less commonly taught languages”
until 9/11, when it suddenly seemed as if every single college student in
America wanted to study Arabic. The same is true of Chinese: Whereas
Middlebury established its Chinese summer Language School as early as
1966, the rest of the nation did not catch up until the late 1990s when it
suddenly became obvious to everybody else that China was on its way to
becoming a global powerhouse.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with people studying Arabic and Chi¬
nese. We desperately need proficient speakers in both languages. With less
than 20 percent of Americans fluent in a second language (as compared to
50 percent in the European Union) we sorely need foreign language speakers
to remain competitive in a global economy, for purposes of national security,
and to participate in worldwide conversations about risks like climate change,
global health and resources (food, water, energy), or migration.

The problem is that we need experts in all the most important world languages,
not just the one or two “critical languages du jour.’’Just as we found ourselves
catastrophically short of Arabic speakers after 9/11 (and, more importantly
before 9/11!), who is to say that, in the wake of a resurgent Russia, we will
not someday wish we had had more Russianists?

Currently, many people in the federal government and consequently many
administrators of educational institutions seem to think that some of our
traditional languages (except for Spanish) no longer matter. This includes
French, German, Italian, and Russian. (It also includes Japanese, which, as
recently as the 1990s, was very “hot.”) There are about no million people in
dozens of countries worldwide who speak French as their native language.
About 100 million in central Europe speak German. It is also the most
widely spoken second language in Europe, after English. Russian is spoken

by some 160 million people—and, as The Economist noted some time ago,
we are neglecting a country that remains one of the world’s superpowers
at our peril. Japanese is spoken by 125 million people; in 2012, Japan, with a
GDP of U.S. $6 trillion, was still the world’s third largest economy behind
the United States and China, and ahead of Germany. Yet in the headlong
race to throw all of our (dwindling) resources at the language spoken by the
people we most fear at any given point in time, we are sending a powerful
message to students and the public at large that languages matter onlv if we
are at war with the people who speak them.

What we need is a strategic language reserve, a place, or better yet, many
places, where the 10 or 20 most important world languages will always be
taught, reliably, year after year, with cutting-edge pedagogy and technology
in a setting that is immersive, contextualized, interactive, and high octane.
There are only three or four places in the nation that do this, and among
these, Middlebury has by far the longest tradition of excellence in immersion

42 Middlebury magazine

LANGUAGE IN DEPTH

language education. As Middlebury’s Language Schools approach our cen¬
tennial in 2015, we should remember that, except for the German School
between 1917 (consider the date!) and 1931, Middlebury has never closed a
Language School. This means that Middlebury is one place in the nation
where, for a hundred years, students have been able to come and study a
particular language in one summer, and then return to study some more one
or two or many years later. We now teach 10 languages: Arabic, Chinese,
French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Span¬
ish. And we expect to teach these languages (and others we hope to add) a
decade from now and, barring unforeseen disasters, many years into the
future. If this country is to remain competitive, secure, and a leader on issues
of global import, it will be critical for us to speak the world’s languages. □

Michael Geisler is a professor of German and the vice president of the Language
Schools, schools abroad, and graduate programs at Middlebury.

But What
about English?

By Matt Jennings

It is estimated that 375 million people around the world speak English as
their first language; another 375 million, and possibly more, speak English as a
second language. Beyond that, even more people speak English to some level
of competence, as many as 25 percent of this planet’s seven billion people.

And the demand for the other three-quarters is increasing. Why? “Because
English is the language of business and commerce,” says Renee Jourdenais,
the dean of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language
Education at the Monterey Institute. “If you are in China, and you want to
do business with Russia or Japan or India, you need a common language, and
English often serves as that language.”

English is also the official language for maritime and aeronautical commu¬
nications, for the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee; it
is the primary or official language for nearly 100 countries around the globe.
For those who can’t speak English, they are at risk of being marginalized,
a phenomenon taking place both far and near. Consider: An estimated one
in four children in the United States are from immigrant families and live
in households where a language other than English is spoken. As a result,
in American schools, there is a significant learning gap between English-
language learners and native English speakers.

Being able to teach English to nonnative speakers is of critical importance.
Under Jourdenais’s purview at MI IS are both the programs in intensive
English and teaching English to speakers of other languages. (The former is
for international students seeking to learn English; the latter trains people
to teach English.) Here are some of Jourdenais’s thoughts on the learning
and teaching of English:

On the need for understanding English

There’s the business and commerce equation, as I mentioned. English
is increasingly seen as the lingua franca of the world. If you want to partici¬
pate in the global economy, if you want to be globally literate, knowing how
to speak and read English can maximize your possibilities. Likewise, if we
look inwardly at our own country, the demographics of the United States are
changing. The number of people who speak languages other than English
is increasing. And English serves as a common language for U.S. residents
as well. As such, there is a critical need in our country and our schools for
teachers who can teach English to nonnative speakers—to help close a critical
learning gap between those who come to school English-fluent and those who
need to develop their English skills along with their academic knowledge.

On the teaching of English to nonnative speakers

Too often, people assume that if you can speak a language, if you are “fluent”
in a language, then you can teach it. That’s not entirely true. Those who want
to teach English to speakers of other languages need to know why people
need the language and how they acquire it. These potential teachers need
a sound linguistic foundation—they have to understand linguistic theory,
the structures of language, and theories of how languages are learned. And
then there is language pedagogy—how best to teach languages and engage
students in their learning experience. These teachers also need to be pre¬
pared to teach students who come from different backgrounds with different
ways of learning. All of this is so important—these teachers are giving their
students a voice in the world. □

Winter 2013 43

By Sierra Crane-Murdoch ’09, Photography by Ron Seymour

By All Appearances

Dwayne Nash ’99 was once part of the legal institution he now seeks to reform.

The morning was like any other. It was late February, and Dwayne Nash ’99 woke in a brownstone on
Manhattan Avenue, in New York City’s Precinct 28, where Malcolm X once demanded custody of a black man the
police beat nearly to death. That was before the riots, before crack hit hard and the War on Drugs took the deal¬
ers and doers to prison, and Harlem became a nice, historical neighborhood with tree-lined streets and rents so
high that Nash, a former criminal prosecutor, could hardly afford his own apartment. This morning, like every
morning, Nash lay in bed and scrolled through headlines on his iPhone. One caught his eye—a neighborhood
watchman had shot and killed an unarmed black kid in Sanford, Florida. Trayvon Martin had looked “suspicious,”
the watchman, George Zimmerman, said. Martin was on his way home with an iced tea and a bag of Skittles when
Zimmerman called the police. By the time an officer arrived, the young man was dead. |f

Winter 2015 45

N ash had known his share of murders, but this one par¬
ticularly rattled him. Zimmerman had claimed he acted in
self-defense, and the police let him go. “You have one person
standing there with a gun, the other person dead. You have
to give the body the benefit of the doubt,” said Nash. Why
didn’t they? “I don’t think the police were incompetent. I think they saw no
value in Trayvon, in investigating any further. His blackness made his body
less important.”

Two weeks later, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education met Nash
in a coffee shop in Harlem. Nash, 35, is at first glance modish and circumspect;
the reporter took note of his “Burberry tie” and “wing-tipped shoes.” She
wanted to know what he thought of the incident. Nash, a doctoral candidate
at Northwestern University’s black-studies program, was researching the
history of stop-and-frisk, a police tactic popularized in the 1990s by former
New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. His research is part of a growing body of
work that equates the criminalization of today’s minorities with the laws that
once denied African Americans their basic rights. One-third of all black men
in the United States are under the watch of the criminal justice system—in
prison, on probation, on parole—the majority charged with drug possession
and other nonviolent offenses. Statistically, a white person is more likely to
use drugs than an African American. Scholars have known for a long time that
the numbers don’t add up and trace the disparity to the 1980s and the War
on Drugs, when police raided dense, urban neighborhoods. But Nash’s work
traces the problem even further back, to the 1960s, when the Civil Rights
Act passed and white Americans grasped at a new kind of racial control.

Nash chose his words carefully to the Chronicle reporter, at once gentle
and emphatic: “Whether we are stopped, searched, arrested, or shot, it’s all
the same. We’re being read as a threat, criminal, or suspicious at the very
least. Instead ofTrayvon Martin, it could have been me that was killed. I pray
that a gun barrel is not pointed to my face for making an innocent gesture
or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time because of my skin color.
There was no right place for Trayvon. He was walking home in the rain, doing
nothing wrong, and he was read as suspicious.”

This past October, when I met Nash in Chicago, I asked him to reflect
again on the incident. George Zimmerman, the watchman who shot Martin,
had since been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Nash was
dissatisfied. “There is a long history of viewing the black body with criminal
suspicion,” he said. “That memory has been transmitted across generations
and time—and across institutions, as well.” In this case, said Nash, the real
problem was not Zimmerman, nor even the cops, but Florida’s stand-your-
ground law, which gives the benefit of the doubt to anyone who claims they
shot another in self-defense. “If you believe that Zimmerman was just one
bad apple, just ‘that racist,’ then you miss the point,” he said. “Zimmerman
knew that he could draw from the law to protect himself. He knew he had
greater rights than Trayvon. He did something wrong, but the legal institu¬
tion made that possible.”

E very weekday for five years, Nash rode the elevator to the
sixth floor of 1 Hogan Place and walked half-a-block length down
the dim, green hall to Trial Bureau 50. The walk was a source of
pride; the door sergeant knew him by name, the marble was
impeccably polished, the secretary, with whom he had attended
high school, smiled only for him. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
rivals Los Angeles’s in size, and Trial Bureau 50 has a reputation for produc¬
ing the toughest prosecutors around. Its chief, Warren Murray, is a military
man. “Each case we were to treat as if we were Spartan soldiers who would
not be fooled by the Trojan horse,” said Nash. In his first week as assistant
district attorney, Nash was assigned 10 cases; in his second, he took on 20.
“That was how our chief played with us. You never got comfortable. You
were always in triage.”

It was the small crimes at first—drugs, theft, third-degree assault. Soon,

Nash was working in the Early Case Assessment Bureau, where he inter¬
viewed officers after a crime had been committed to see if he had grounds
to prosecute the case. From time to time, he questioned the perpetrator. “I
was always shocked to find that even after I would read them their right to
remain silent, their right to an attorney, their right to know that anything
they said could be used against them in court, they still wanted to tell me
their story, even if it might hurt them.” Once, a defendant requested that
his wife speak with Nash. Nash agreed, thinking the wife may have been an
accomplice. The three of them chatted for a while. “Eventually, I realized
that the man just wanted his wife to witness him doing the right thing,” said
Nash. “He thought he was being an honest guy, giving himself up, and he
wanted to make sure she’d still be there when he got out.”

Even on the job, Nash expressed a playful sort of cool, a trait, perhaps,
that drew the truth out of people. While most prosecutors left their office
walls blank, he pinned his with photographs from his travels abroad. His
fellow ADAs joked that Nash put more holes in his walls than the police
shot through Amadou Diallo. One day, Nash went to trial in a salmon shirt
and matching tie, though Murray had demanded that all prosecutors wear
white shirts beneath their suit jackets. “I had to ask the chief a question, and
he wouldn’t respond,” recalled Nash. “He stared at me like I was an alien.
I was thinking, Is this question going to be answered? Then he said, ‘What
are you wearing?’ I said, ‘Chief, I wore pink because I’m feeling like a pink
day.’ He let me be.”

Nash believes it was his skin color that ultimately lent him an advantage.
Most of his fellow attorneys were white, while defendants, and even officers,
were often black or Hispanic. “I think they would look at me and decide they
felt comfortable telling me all kinds of things,” he said. Nash became close
with several officers; they came over to his house and talked about their kids.
“I knew that an officer coming in would think, okay, he’s probably a chill,
normal guy. He’s not going to bust my balls.”

In spite of this, Nash was a relentless prosecutor and, especially at the
beginning, maintained a reverence for the law that some of his colleagues
thought he took too far. Once, he charged two teenagers with trespassing for
having sex on the roof of an apartment building. “It was dangerous, and they
weren’t supposed to be there,” he said. Another time, he charged a Ron Paul
supporter for selling political playing cards outside the Republican National
Convention without a permit. Nash does not doubt these decisions, but he
does regret one particular case, in which an elderly woman was caught selling
drugs not far from a school in Harlem. At the time, Nash lived beside the
school and woke every morning to children’s voices passing on the sidewalk
below. In New York, selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school earns a higher
felony charge. Nash felt conflicted about this law. “There’s a school within
1,000 feet of anyone selling drugs in Manhattan. Black people tend to live
in dense areas. So it puts the ones caught up in a system of selling drugs at
an unfair disadvantage.” Still, Nash ordered the police officers to chart the
distance with a measuring stick; it was 800 feet. “I wanted the jury to see
that she had no respect for small children. And yet I still think that school
zone law should be repealed. I charged something I didn’t think should be
on the books.”

Eventually, Nash was assigned more difficult cases. He worked on the
“smart stuff” like identity theft and, in his fourth year, prosecuted his first
homicide. He didn’t like rape or child molestation cases, which wore on him
emotionally, nor did he consider himself very good in the domestic violence
unit. “I always wanted to solve the marriage problem,” he said, and admitted
that he was more concerned with getting the victim to safety than with pros¬
ecuting the assailant. In most cases, defendants would plead guilty before the
case went to trial, but Nash lived for the CSI moments. Every stand he took
in front of a jury became a kind of performance: “Good morning ladies and
gentleman of the jury,” he’d begin. “I’d explain that this was called voir dire.
It’s French, to speak the truth. ‘I want you to speak the truth to me. I know
it’s hard to judge another person, and if you don’t want to do it, then we can
excuse you. But if you believe the person is guilty beyond a doubt, then will
you convict?’That was so natural to me, to look in their eyes.”

46 Middlebury magazine

It was only after Nash had served several years at the DA that he began
to notice some troubling patterns. For every case that he prosecuted, he
wrote a report recommending a charge and submitted it to his supervisors.
He recalled a few cases involving white, educated defendants in which his
supervisors recommended lessening the charge, but when the defendant
was black, he said, they often approved of his recommendation. “Once I
thought a defendant had done a very violent thing, but he only got a slap
on the wrist. He was wealthy, in college, and drunk in the East Village on a
Friday night,” he said. White defendants, Nash found, were more likely to
challenge a charge in court, while black defendants often pled guilty without
a fight. He noticed, too, that black and Hispanic defendants, though most
often charged with minor crimes, cycled frequently through the system.

At first, these observations puzzled Nash, who had never suspected his
colleagues of racial bias. “Rarely in those five years did any officer say anything
to me that made it apparent they were engaging in racial profiling,” he said.
Then, in 2005, one case made things clear. It was summertime, and a white
woman was idling her car outside a housing project in Harlem. Police had
watched two black men get out and go into the building. Suspecting that the
three were involved in a drug deal, they approached the woman, who told
them that she was waiting for her cousins. It was a dangerous neighborhood,
they replied, and ordered her to leave. When the men emerged, the police
searched and arrested them. “If you thought this woman was involved in the
crime, then why would you let her go?” said Nash. “The only reason was her
whiteness. They were not concerned that she could be trafficking or carrying
drugs, but those two black men were already seen as criminals.”

The police officers realized that in their system, blackness functioned as
an asset: “You take a black body, and what you get is a payoff.” A white body

might put up a fight—the charges might not stick, the reward may not be
as great. Statistically, blacks and Hispanics don’t fare as well through the
criminal justice system. Why? “Because they’re poor. Because they have
public attorneys who are overworked, burned out, or jaded.” This made
them more vulnerable.

Nash dismissed the case, but he had begun to think that the criminal
justice system was broken beyond his fixing. How many similar cases had
slipped quietly through, simply because the law enabled them to? Nash
rarely suspected officers of racial profiling, he now realized, because officers
weren’t aware of what they were doing; in fact, they had been trained to do
their job this way.

In 1993, when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City, he hired
William Bratton as his police commissioner. Bratton was a proponent of the
broken windows theory, that stemming small crimes and acts of vandalism
would ultimately prevent more serious crimes. Stop-and-frisk was one way
that police enforced this model. With only an inkling of suspicion—the
smallest crack in a window, for example—officers could stop a person on the
street and search for contraband. It was, by all appearances, a racially neutral
policy—unless one looks to the numbers. Every year since 2002, more than 80
percent of individuals stopped and frisked were black or Hispanic. In 2011,
9 percent of those stopped were arrested. Officers may not intend to target
people of color, but they are hanging out in poor, black neighborhoods. Why?
Nash knew that if an officer was looking to fill a quota, policing a dense area
was more efficient, but he began to think, too, that black neighborhoods
simply had less political capital. “If police were to take this to the suburbs,
people would complain, politicians would respond to those complaints, and
the police would be told to leave. That doesn’t happen in these neighbor-

Winter 2013 47

hoods. Their power and voice has not always been very great—certainly not
great enough to stop mistreatment by the police.”

It is a predicament nearly impossible to dig oneself out of. A third of
America’s prison inmates are black. “They’re now second-class citizens,”
said Nash. “Once they’re convicted of a felony, they lose their right to vote.
They lose their rights to public assistance in housing. They can’t rejoin their
families if they live in housing projects, so there’s a severing of family ties.
It also makes them unmarketable for jobs. This is what we call social death.
You cannot participate in the political system. Your voice means nothing.”

In his fifth year as ADA, while prosecuting his final homicide, Nash stud¬
ied for the GRE. In 2008, he enrolled at Northwestern University. When I
asked what his colleagues thought of his leaving, he told me, “I think they
thought I always acted more like a professor anyway.”

O N A WARM DAY IN LATE OCTOBER, I followed Nash Up the
dim, vaulted staircase of Northwestern University’s old
library into a cloistered wing that held the archive. The first
time he visited an archive was at the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture in Harlem. He didn’t know what
to do; he approached the archivist and said he was looking for articles on
stop-and-frisk in the 1960s, but she told him that such a thing did not exist.
“That’s when I knew I was onto something,” he said. Instead, he began with
a box filed under “police misconduct.’’The archivist instructed that he stand
facing her with the box at a perpendicular angle to his body and examine
only one folder at once.

Now, in the Joseph Speer Beck Angling Collection Room, Nash inspected
a box with similar precision. He laid a folder on the cold, wooden table and
flipped its contents like the pages of a book. The articles, dated August 1968,
concerned protests that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago. Clashes with police had left many injured, and Nash was curious
if anyone had complained about the brutality. He flipped quickly through
the pages, pausing only once on a list of policemen who had been wounded:
cut hand, bruised thigh, lacerated shin. It reminded Nash of the notes he
took as a prosecutor, meticulously tallying each officer’s injury.

He took another folder from the box, and now something caught his eye.
It was a photograph of four black men, each shirtless, on their knees, facing a
wall, and an officer pointing a gun at their backs. It looked like an execution,
I said, and Nash laughed. “I’m sure it feels like that for them, but it’s only
one officer and he’s stopped four people. He’s just making sure there’s no
bodily harm to himself.” Nash flipped the page, but I stopped him. Did the
photograph bother him at all? He hesitated. Then he said, slowly, “I have a
deep appreciation for the law. When I see this, I think, this is an indication
of anarchy. This is a breakdown of power, of democracy.” He took his iPhone
from his pocket and, holding it with surgeon-steady hands, snapped a pho¬
tograph of the page. “Yes, it’s scary. I think, ‘This could happen to me.’ I am
always afraid that as a black person, no matter where I’ve gone to school, no
matter how I’m dressed, I could be singled out—subjected to humiliation
and physical threat, or to the fear of being murdered.”

How he carried himself was, no doubt, a material upwelling of his natural
temperament, but it was also a method of survival. His nephews, who dress in
hoodies and baggy jeans, tease Nash for wearing “young clothes,” as though
his conservative, childhood outfits had simply expanded along with him.
Nash calls this style his “politics of respectability.” In order to navigate a
racial world, he told me, “There’s a certain level of daily performance that
you must engage in.”

But wasn’t changing one’s appearance to avoid suspicion a kind oppres¬
sion in itself? “Yes,” he said, “but you have to make it through life. For me,
survival is a form of resistance. When you’re among friends and family and
in a safe place, then you can resume being yourself. But when you’re going
from point A to point B, your main goal should be to survive.”

Nash turned the page. There was a photograph of a Black Panther, a

man holding a gun. “You see,” said Nash, “it’s all a performance. Here we
see men in the Black Power movement performing their masculinity. It’s
like they’re saying, ‘We may be subjected to police terror, but we will not be
afraid.’ They have to show their power. It’s how they resist.” He returned
the folder to its box.

“It’s a daily performance, only the stage doesn’t have walls.”

I n 1939, his great-grandmother, Cleo Johnson, moved the fam¬
ily from Georgia to a house on East 26th in Brooklyn. She opened
a restaurant on Green Avenue and served fried fish and sometimes
pork chops with gravy. Nash’s mother, Brenda, grew up in the busi¬
ness and, at the age of five, was tasked with counting change for
customers. She remembers the packed Friday nights and the smoky sting in
her nose and eyes. But by 1977, the year she gave birth to Nash, the neighbor¬
hood had fallen into decline. Thieves killed the druggist on the corner, and
months later, shot a man at a gas station across the street. Johnson closed
the restaurant and returned south.

Thereafter, Nash spent his summers in Waycross, Georgia. He passed the
time in a forest beside the house, imagining he was Indianajones, and when
he grew bored, rode his bike around town, dropping in on elderly women he
knew from church. On his great-grandmother’s urging, he did their chores.
You mop that floor, and you do it with perfection, she would tell him. “I
didn’t realize until much later that she was teaching me to be humble,” he
said. “And getting me out of the house so she could watch her soap operas.”
If he seemed at all listless, she would hand him a dictionary and tell him
to memorize it. He didn’t mind this; he liked how the sounds fit together.

Nash was shy as a child and spent much of his time alone. While the
neighborhood kids played skelly in the street, melting wax into bottle caps
that they flicked across a chalk grid, he preferred imagining new worlds in the
backyard. His action figures never fought—they went to school, found jobs,
bought houses; he bent their plastic forms to fit behind miniature desks. He
was a devout student and walked to school each morning with the New York
Times tucked beneath his arm. Sometimes, when his older brothers and their
friends listened to loud music, Nash rose from his homework, knocked on
their doors, and told them to quiet down. “Let them be,” his mother would
say. “I’d rather have them in the house than on the street.” Once, Nash re¬
plied, “Well, don’t bring the street into the house!” His mother told him to
stop being like his father. Nash was in elementary school.

Frederick Nash was a quiet, stern man who spent much of his time in a
study at the back of the house, building clocks and devising various entre¬
preneurial ventures. Nash generally feared his father, but he struggled with
math and, on several occasions, having prayed first to God that he find the
answer, went to his father for help. “He would always start with, ‘Why can’t
you figure it out yourself?’ ” Nash recalled. “I hated when my father asked,
‘Why?’ He’d explain it to me and walk me through the steps. Then he’d say,
‘Did you understand?’ I was always afraid to say ‘no,’ so I said ‘yes.’ And I
would start and mess up somewhere, and he would say, ‘You told me that you
understood. If you don’t understand something then you must say so. Speak
up for yourself I’m not going to be here always to help you.’ ” Years later, Nash
would realize that his father was, in fact, a gentle man. At night, he tucked
his son in so tightly that Nash woke each morning still plastered to the bed.

In his mother’s words, it was “a really good childhood,” protected from—
but not unconscious of—the world that dove and shifted around him. On
Saturdays, Nash’s grandfather, an artist, took him to the Metropolitan Mu¬
seum of Art and on walking tours of the city’s architecture. Sometimes, they
would sit together on Green Avenue with his grandfather’s “black, socialist
friends.” On Sunday mornings, his mother would tune the radio to gospel
classics, and when they returned from church, Nash would join his father, a
Muslim, in listening to Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam,
on the radio. Later, in high school, he devoured novels by James Baldwin.
Giovannis Room excited him for the “boundaries that it crossed”—a man was

48 Middlebury magazine

in love with a man—before he knew that he would love a man, too.

Nash wonders, looking back, if the multiplicity of his upbringing shielded
him from the harsh reality of what it meant to be young and black in America.
His encounters with prejudice came in shades of black: a racial hierarchy
within his community that denied darker-complected people access to social
clubs. “We don’t partake in that,” his mother would say, but when it came to
“white-on-black” prejudice, “It just wasn’t part of my consciousness,” said
Nash. His childhood opened his eyes on the world but not so wide that he
ever doubted that the things he aspired to were possible.

N ash was 22 when he became fully conscious of his
own blackness. He had graduated from Middlebury and
accepted a full scholarship at Boston College Law. Though
Middlebury was “basically all white,” and many of his black
friends lamented the racial isolation, Nash said he rarely
felt out of place; intellectually, he was more at home than he had ever been.
Once, while taking a class in international negotiations, Nash decided to buy
a used car. “Of course in Vermont, generally if they have a price you either
pay or you don’t,” recalled his professor, Russell Leng ’60. “Dwayne felt he
had to negotiate. He applied all the rules he learned in class. It went on for
weeks, until finally the guy said, ‘Just take it.’ Dwayne got his price and was
very pleased.” Middlebury was a safe, sheltered place where things generally
went Nash’s way. “I had a rich sense of who I was and where I’d come from,”
he said. “It couldn’t be shattered so easily”

In his first year of law school he met Naomi Shelton from Dorchester,
Massachusetts. She was one of four black students in their 75-person cohort
and charmed him with her brassy, Boston accent. That fall, Nash convinced
Shelton to compete with him in a moot court tournament. They won. Nash
saw the results first and ran to tell Naomi, but when they returned to the
board, someone had crossed out their names. “We laughed,” recalled Nash.
“We said, ‘We must have really kicked some ass, because someone is bitter!”’
But when they went to claim their award, they were told they hadn’t won at
all. “Naomi thought that this had something to do with our race. She said,
‘We’re in Boston. This happens all the time.’ I wasn’t ready to accept that,
and I didn’t. But that moment of seeing the situation through Naomi’s eyes
created a consciousness in me.”

Nash never found out what had happened—he didn’t want to press it—but
he began to notice some peculiar things. Every night when he left campus,
a police officer would follow him home and idle in the street until Nash had
parked his car. Then, one day, on a drive to the public library, he pulled onto
the roadside to ask directions from a pedestrian. She was a petite, middle-
aged woman. “Excuse me, Miss,” he said, getting out of the car. She turned
and when she saw him, yelled, “Please, don’t!” A man intervened. “Leave her
alone,” he told Nash, “or it will get really ugly.” Nash tried to explain that he
was looking for the library. “I had this burning sensation in my stomach. It
hit me that maybe Naomi was right. Maybe it was a racist joke that caused us
to disappear from the ranking. Maybe it was strange that this officer followed
me home every night. And maybe it was strange that I had this encounter.
I had a false sense of consciousness, and I realized that put me in danger. It
put me in emotional danger, too.”

Through all of this, Nash knew that despite the color of his skin, he had
certain advantages: He was well educated, and he placed great value in the
fact that his family, unlike most, was still intact. This, too, would change. In
2000, Nash had just returned to New York from Belgium when he called his
mother from the airport. She told him that his brother would pick him up,
and she wouldn’t be there when he got home. “I said, ‘Oh, where are you?’ She
said, ‘It’s a long story.’Then, ‘I’m leavingyour father.’ ” Nash can’t remember
what happened next. When he came to, he was at an airport bar. A woman
told him that she had to go, but everything would be okay.

T here was the sadness of knowing that when he returned
home, his house would feel strange and empty But much deeper
inside Nash, from a place he could not quite explain, there
was also a fear that the divorce had somehow “shattered our
family’s social respectability.” Looking back, Nash recognizes
this fear was unfounded. Most of his friends, white and black, had divorced
parents. Nor could the separation undo all that had shaped him. His mother
seemed content; he grew closer to his father, who, when Nash came out as
gay, appeared quite happy for his son. His parents still talked every day. His
family, he knew, was far from “broken,” and yet, at the time, he felt that the
very stereotypes that had enabled society to devalue black communities
were closing in around him. “The single mother, the absent father, that this
explains all of our social ills—I didn’t want that baggage. It’s not what I grew
up with, and, at first, the divorce seemed to suggest all that.

“You may say, ‘That’s silly, what difference does it make?’ But in the black
communities, there is a concept called ‘linked fate,’ that says we must
remember that we’re all one, that we carry the weight of the race on our
shoulders. The positive things that we do benefit us all, and the negative
things could throw us back. Some people think that way and some people
don’t. But I live it every day. That’s why I do this work, and I’m comfortable
being a soldier in the struggle.”

One night last spring, not long after Trayvon Martin had been shot, Nash
was walking home in Brooklyn when he came across two officers on a street
corner. He rarely saw police in the neighborhood; by then it had gentrified,
each house worth millions. “I saw them standing there, and I wasn’t going
to go around them, so I went between them,” said Nash. He made it nearly
to the other end of the street before the officers called after him. “Excuse
me, sir,” they said, “is that alcohol in your bottle?” Earlier that day, he had
bought spring water and saved the blue glass to use as decoration. “I knew
I hadn’t committed a crime,” said Nash, and so he continued on his way. The
officers followed. As Nash drew closer to his house, the street darkened, and
he grew suddenly afraid. What was it worth ? he thought. After all, he was still
a black man. He turned to face the officers. “Look, it’s nothing,” he said, and
to himself he thought, Resist! Resist! Save myself to fight another day. □

Sierra Crane-Murdoch ’09 is a writer based in Missoula, Montana.

Winter 2013 49

By Meghan Laslocky ’89
Illustration by Jessica Hische

<4ti . . „

HEN 1 WAS AN ENGLISH MAJOR AT MlDDLEBURY

back in the eighties, courtly love was mv cod liver
oil: dosages were the mandatory price I paid for
the lovely beef stew of Middlemarch and the meringue of Pride
and Prejudice. It was key to Chaucer’s Knights Tale , in which two
suitors duke it out to win the love of fair Emily, and Spenser’s
deadly boring Faerie Styeene, and even in Shakespeare, my bug¬
aboo was unavoidable: the romantic fealty of courtly love is
captured in Sonnet 18 ( Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day..),
and its vanilla rituals mocked in Much Ado About Nothing and As
You Like It. Even when it was the subject of satire, courtly love
spawned my biggest, baddest internal eye roll. Once I had my
diploma in my 22-year-old hand, I was sure that with respect to
the canoodling of knights and ladies, I’d never look back.

50 Middlebury magazine

And like any court, and any small school
Middlebury had its own culture.

What strikes me now is that a key component
of that culture was this: love wasn't cool

But then I wound up writing an entire book about the social and cultural
history of heartbreak, and no matter how sturdy my decades-long resistance to
courtly love was, ignoring it in my book would have been downright negligent.
After all, at least in the beginning stages of the courtly romance formula,
heartbreak was codified: a knight attempts to attract a married noble lady’s
attention via stolen glances; then he circles said lady like a shark, perhaps by
attending court just a little too often; then he declares “I love you,” perhaps
from behind a curtain or in a dark corner; the lady replies, “No, no, no! I’m
so very married and so very devout!” and focuses on her needlepoint; the
knight says he just might die if his lady doesn’t return his love; then the
knight moons around court bemoaning how the lady doesn’t love him back.

Only when the knight takes a dramatic risk is the spell of unrequitedness
broken: he might get his hot little hands on a ribbon from the lady, tie it to his
lance, and proceed to win a jousting tournament (with bonus points for any
injuries sustained). Only then might she give in and reward him with kisses
and/or sex, and from there they might sneak about for a little clandestine
codpiece ’n’ corset action. The nobility of courtly love, of the heartbreak,
was in the attenuated longing, and consummation between the lovelorn
knight and his lady was theoretically verboten. If the relationship was consum¬
mated, the thrill of the chase was replaced by the thrill of evading detection.

No doubt part of the reason why I found courtly love so irksome lay in the
fact that it was so at odds with what I was experiencing as a young woman
at Middlebury in the eighties—or thought I was experiencing. Among my
peers/friends, romance and its close associate, eroticism, were certainly
not celebrated. (The terms I recall for sexual encounters were “hooking
up,” “muckling,” and most memorably, if repeated encounters were the
case, “dealing.”) In my own personal experience, the only thing that sex
and romance at Middlebury had in common with courtly love was that it
was furtive: the closest thing I had to a relationship in college was a guy I’d
hook up with—FOR THREE YEARS!—but we couldn’t hack breakfast
together in Proctor, much less meet up to see a Hitchcock movie at Dana
Auditorium. It makes sense then that my muckling self, sitting there in the
second row of a classroom in Munroe, Faerie Queen open, was perplexed
by the idea of an entire subculture devoted to mooning around for love.

But then, nearly 25 years later, I found myself fascinated by the academic
debates that have, for decades now, framed discussions about courtly love.
What was it exactly? A real phenomenon, a literary device, or a little of
both? Among those who believe that knights really did hotly pursue married
women, the phenomenon is thought to have been more or less natural adap¬
tation: in a milieu where marriages among the upper classes were arranged
and loveless, courtly love was a neat ruse that covered, justified, or perhaps
even celebrated adultery. Some who have studied it have gone so far as to
suggest that the spread of courtly love across Europe from the 12 th century
onward marked a sexual revolution in which women radically turned the
tables on men. Others are quick to point out that there is really no evidence
whatsoever that courtly love existed anywhere but on paper and in song: no
legal cases, no chronicles, no correspondence. It has even been suggested
that many depictions of courtly love in medieval literature were more or less
ironic jokes, just as they were in Shakespeare several hundred years later.

Initially, as I absorbed the fact that courtly love has no smoking gun, I
felt vindicated: my 20-year-old self was wise beyond her years. She knew
courtly love was bogus. It was as absurd as, in today’s world, a midlevel

52 Middlebury magazine

manager professing undying love for the CEO’s wife, sailing into tough
meetings with her Hermes scarf wrapped around his arm, and then crying
to the crowd around the water cooler about how she doesn’t love him back.

But the nagging questions about it also got me thinking about love at
Middlebury in the eighties—about what was, what wasn’t, and what might
have been. Naturally this line of thinking got me rummaging around in what
I think of as my Middlebury closet, pushing past my cynicism to the painful
box of regrets/box of pain, but it also got me going drawing comparisons
between the upper echelons of the medieval world and, yes, Middlebury.
Think about it: like a royal court, Middlebury is elite, packed with smart
and attractive people; like a court, it is physically isolated from the rest of
the world; and like a court, it has its cliques and pecking orders. It is a castle
on a hill.

And, like any court, and any small school, Middlebury also had its own
culture. What strikes me now is that a key component of that culture was
this: love wasn’t cool. “Hooking up” was cool, walks of shame were cool, but
unabashed love, as in shouting to the hills that are his also, that you were madly
in love? Not so much. Sure, there were the rare couples who were in love and
wore their hearts on their Patagonia sleeves, but those were the exception,
not the rule. The way I see it, never in the history of man has there been a
group of 18-21-year-olds quite so determined to not be in love.

I’m sure this had something to do with the fact that for four years, we
were in essence at an endless banquet: you could pick and choose among
countless smart, attractive, and more-or-less like-minded individuals to
spend your time with. Indeed, you could have a crush in every dining hall
to keep you entertained. The rock climber who ate with his friends in the
SDUs; the lacrosse player in Proctor who you hooked up with freshman
year; the moody poet in Lower Proctor. I also think the collective resis¬
tance to love originated in naivete: little did we know just how precious
that time in the castle on the hill was, and weak was our understanding that
never again would we share such intimate space with so many interesting
people the same age. So the saying goes, youth is wasted on the young.

But I’ve talked to a few close friends from Middlebury about this, and
we all agree that there was more to it than that. At Middlebury then, and
perhaps now, tribalism was fierce. Perhaps the lack of love at Middlebury
also had something to do with fear of crossing social boundaries, of being
associated with someone who, even within the coziness of Middlebury,
was “other.” Love wasn’t in the air, but following the rules was. And fore¬
most in that pack of rules was this: “Thou shalt not profess undying love.”

I’m in my mid-forties now, and perhaps unduly preoccupied in my research
on love by what was, what wasnt, and what might have been. I regret that I
didn’t have the confidence and steeliness to tell the boys I loved—and yes,
there were a few—how I felt, and I regret dismissing the ones who were
bold, and yes! wise enough to at least hint that they loved me. Love wasn’t
in the air, and yet it was all around us. The flickers deserved to be fed.

And as for courtly love, the trappings of adoration, confession, and per¬
sistence, and my now-ancient distaste for them? Now I know that the line
between scorn and envy is a thin one. Love isn’t just loving, it’s letting oneself
be loved. □

Meghan Laslocky ’89 is the author 0/The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone
Wrong through the Ages, Plume/Penguin 2013.

In a photo taken for the
Saturday Evening Post ,
students pose before
going on the 1947 Winter
Carnival sleigh ride.

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54 Pursuits

56 In the Queue

58 Class Notes

64 Short Story

68 Autobiography

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54 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

By Kathryn Flagg ’08

The Interpreter

Htar Htar Yu ’08 spent her early years in the jungles of Burma, the daughter
of political rebels waging guerrilla warfare against the military regime that
since 1962 has ruled the country now known as Myanmar. It was a danger¬
ous childhood, punctuated by ambushes and flights through the jungle, f

PARALLELS

WALL OF REFUGEE ART

“Volunteers from all parts of Vermont contribute to the
Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. The photos on the
wall behind me were taken by volunteers on World Refugee
Day and each piece of art was created by refugee children
here in Vermont. Bringing our differences together, we shape
and create a piece of art that represents a foundation for our
world, where mankind’s social, political, and economic cultures
exist at one adjustable level.’’

And yet for Yu, that tumultuous early childhood was soon eclipsed by her

own drive to earn an education, which led her
from the refugee villages of the Burmese border
to the streets ofThailand—and then, of all places,
to Vermont. Now she’s helping Burmese refugees,
who number roughly 250 in the Burlington area,
navigate a similar transition. As an interpreter with
the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, she’s
the voice of a growing number of refugees in the
region struggling to acclimate in the same place
that Yu, 28, has made her new home.

“They have language barriers, cultural barriers,
economic barriers,” she says. “Everything is new
to them, from dialing phones to using bathrooms
to using stoves. But they’re very adaptive and very
quick learners.”

Yu’s journey to Vermont began in earnest in
1991, when, after years of brutal fighting, the
Tavoyan ethnic army in which her father fought
could no longer resist Burma’s military. Her family
retreated to a refugee camp on theThai-Burmese
border, where for the first time Yu, then eight, at¬
tended school. Four years later she left her family
to continue her education in a neighboring camp,
and she’s been independent ever since.

Her family sneaked into Thailand a few years
later amid growing fears that Yu’s father might
be a target for assassination. Yu followed and in
Thailand learned English at a school funded by
philanthropist George Soros. Soon she struck up
a friendship with a young Vermonter who sug¬
gested Yu—who’d only completed formal schooling
through the seventh grade—consider spending a
year as an exchange student in the United States.

She landed in Barre, Vermont, and was initially
baffled by the helpfulness of her teachers, host
family, and community. “I felt that I was dropped
into this wonderful land,” she said. It was in Barre
that she heard about Middlebury College, and she
drafted her application after returning to Thailand
the following August. Yu matriculated in 2004 at
nearly 22 years old, and went on to study sociology
and anthropology with a minor in gender studies.

It turned out that at the same time Yu was fin¬

ishing her degree, the Vermont Refugee Resettle¬
ment Program was introducing the first wave of
Burmese refugees to the region. The program’s
director, Judy Scott, paid Yu a visit in 2008 and told
the young woman that the resettlement program
was desperate for a Burmese language interpreter.

In the years since, Yu has attended the births
of 14 Burmese children born in Vermont. She’s
accompanied refugees to countless medical ap¬
pointments, court dates, and school meetings.
It can be a difficult job, particularly when she’s
called upon to translate bad news. “Whatever
the good news or the bad news or the angry news
or the uncomfortable news, as close as I can, I’m
supposed to convey the message,” says Yu. And her
work stretches beyond the stuff of language: In 99
percent of cases, she estimates, she finds herself
called upon to dole out advice as well.

“She has been the great forerunner in learning
about American society and American culture,”
says Scott, who praises Yu for her tireless involve¬
ment in Vermont’s Burmese community. “She’s
already done the hardest work of being plopped
alone in Vermont and having to figure out how to
adjust while at the same time determining how
to remain true to her own personality, to her for¬
bears, to her heritage.” In the process of guiding
new refugees through similar transitions, Yu has
become a fierce advocate of education, urging the
Burmese in Vermont to go to school, to obtain
their degrees, and to encourage their own children
in schoolwork.

She finds herself wondering about the ramifica¬
tions of imposing new values on these families,
but says ultimately she can only draw conclusions
from her own life.

“At some point we have to choose. My message
to them is, you should adapt. That doesn’t mean
you have to forget your past life or your culture,
but at least you’ll be able to function here.” ED

Kathryn Flagg ’08 is a staff writer for Seven Days
newspaper. She lives in Shoreham, Vermont.

SOUL OF BURMA

The leading pro-democracy
opposition leader in Burma, Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, was elected
to the Parliament in a landslide
victory in April 2012. Winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 ,
she spent most of the past two
decades under detention. “She
is a freedom and democracy
fighter. She is the soul of Burma
and the world. I admire her from
my heart and soul.”

EARLY EDUCATION

“In the jungle
we didn’t have
schooling. When I
came to the refugee
camp, I got enrolled
in official school—it
was second grade back
then. We wore uniforms,
white top and blue skirt,
and I was good at school.
Walking to school from home
through the middle of the camp,
for a kid who was almost nine, it
was quite grand to me.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRETT SIMISON

Winter 2013 55

BOOK REVIEW

Risky Business

1 EVE LKNIEVEL
PRM5

t PAULS TOUTONGHI

By Regan Eberhart

What do you do when
you never knew your father,
and then one day he comes
to town—and leaves again
without a word?

Pauls Toutonghi ’98 has written a novel that
makes you happy. It presents a cheerful, thoughtful
outlook on the world as it traces a young man’s tu¬
multuous leap into independent adulthood. Khosi
Saqr is 23 years old and lives with his mother in
Butte, Montana. He’s the type of son most moth¬
ers would adore—devoted, kind-hearted, likes his
mom—even takes care of her a bit. When she does
crazy things, such as suddenly hauling him out
of bed to help her dig up the Egyptian walking
onions that have been overgrowing her garden
for years, or to taste her cooking so she can adjust
the seasoning, he complies with the calm patience
that comes from having a close bond.

It’s just been Khosi and his mom since he was
three, when his Egyptian father deserted the family,
leaving behind his “foods and traditions, a hundred
thousand dollars in gambling debts, and a three-
year-old boy as copper as a penny. ” This desertion
has haunted them both ever since. Khosi thinks
of his father as a “mockery,” a “hidden galaxy,” an
“empty suitcase.” And, Khosi, with his dark skin
and foreign-sounding name, struggles to fit in in
Butte. His mother, the great-great-granddaughter
of a mining magnate who amassed a fortune in the
copper mines, continued to cook her husband’s
recipes after he left, becoming a master of Middle
Eastern cuisine. The recipes she prepares weave
throughout the story with a sensory force that
seems to link the past and present—her mulukhiyya
“fills the air with the smell of garlic and onion and
boiling jute leaves and sizzling olive oil.”

Khosi is a compelling character because of his
objective, open-minded way of seeing the world.
His unvarnished observations of the people
and town he lives in are made without a hint of
reproach. They just are. This includes his obser¬
vations of himself. He describes his obsessive-
compulsive nature with acceptance: “I had a few
small tasks I had to complete before I could begin
my day. It’s not that I had a problem; I was totally
normal. It’s simply that I needed to arrange the

56 Middlebury magazine

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN HAAKE

covers of the bed at a certain angle, with six inches
of white folded back above the top sheet. And then
I had to touch all four walls of the room—north,
south, east, west.” He continues with an involved
list of things he must do and concludes, “Some
might call this obsessive-compulsive. I’d call it a
friendly (gentle) attention to detail.”

Khosi’s evolution begins when Butte’s annual
stunt-jumping festival, Evel Knievel Days, is un¬
derway. (Evel Knievel, the town’s “favorite son,”
was born in Butte.) Motorcyclists, visitors, and
stuntmen of all types descend on the city, and
Khosi learns that his father has just paid a clandes¬
tine visit to town and left again. This sets Khosi
off on a daring adventure of his own—to find his
father in Cairo, with no contact information and
with limited Arabic skills.

As it turns out, it is surprisingly easy for Khosi to
locate his father, but connecting with his Egyptian
family is much harder. After experiencing some
near tragedies (and some near miraculous rescues),
Khosi discovers the answers he has been longing
for and finds his roots.

Evel Knievel Days is not only charming and witty,
its nuanced, optimistic outlook is as welcome as
a meal cooked by Khosi’s mother. □

EXCERPT

What's it like to be the child of an
immigrant? I know and I don't know ,
both. I have a family tree somewhere, but
I don't know where, and it's probably
in Arabic, or possibly French, or possibly
both. The past, the history of my family,
is a strange and hybrid beast. On the one
side: exhaustively documented. I live and
work in its midst. But on the other side:
nothing. No body, no clothes, no cane, no
toupee, no set of dentures, no artifacts
whatsoever. Only a vocabulary that
vanishes as soon as it's fashioned into
language. Only the vocabulary of exile
and disappearance.

ClassActs

Circling Back

By Blair Kloman, MA English ’94

They may have started small on this Vermont
campus back in the late ’90s, but for Brad
Corrigan ’96, Chad Urmston ’98, and Pete
Heimbold ’99, their talent and hard work took
them far.

Better known as the band Dispatch, the three
college friends went on to become one of the
most successful indie bands of their day. After
a fast-paced run of energetic live performances
and a string of recordings, the band went separate
ways in 2002. Though the three stayed somewhat
connected, reuniting for fund-raising events
in the mid-2000s, it wasn’t until last year that
Dispatch made an official reunion tour. Circles
Around the Sun is the band’s full-length culmina¬
tion of that tour, as well as its first new release in
more than a decade.

Fans will be delighted to find that the band’s
characteristic harmonies are still there, yet newly
evolved. Their reggae roots have a more polished
edge, and their lyrical intensity suggests an
expected maturity. Explosive guitar riffs are bal¬
anced with thematic melodies and even a catchy
tune or two. The final track offers up a playful
reprise for those willing to listen in a little longer.

No doubt the live interpretations of this latest
release will make for some excellent venue listen¬
ing as the band continues to tour and do what it
does best. And many fans may be left hoping that
this isn’t just another reunion album but perhaps
the next iteration of a beloved band. □

EDITORS' PICKS

PETER MANDEL

Zoo Ah-choooo
(Holiday House)

What starts innocently
enough with a snow leopard
sneeze turns suddenly
into zoo-wide cacophony.
Another delightful picture
book from Peter Mandel 79.

AMANDA NISBET

Dazzling Design
(Stewart, Tabori & Chang)
Photographs of elegant yet
playful interiors fill the pages
of this colorful book about
the projects Amanda Travers
Nisbet ’86 has designed over
the years.

THOMAS A. CHAMBERS

Memories of War
(Cornell University Press)
Although American
battlefields are endemic to
our national identity, most
Revolutionary War sites
remained unmarked for
years. Thomas Chambers ’91
examines the development
of battleground memorials
between 1755 and 1860.

STEPHANIE KATE
STROHM

Pilgrims Don’t Wear Pink
(Graphia)

History, humor, and romance
(and perhaps a ghost?) mix
intriguingly in this engaging
young adult debut novel by
Stephanie Kate Strohm 08.
the first of a trilogy.

Winter 2013 57

ClassActs

Directors of the Middlebury College Alumni Association (MCAA) Suzanne K. Daley ’96, President • Robert
V. Sideli ’77, Vice President • Zachary A. Bourque ’01, Past President • Victoria M. Baptiste ’04 • Laura L. Bozarth ’92, MIIS
’94 • Molly Shuttleworth Evans ’96 • Matt J. Goebel ’94 • Richard A. Hawley ’67 • Phyllis Wendell Mackey ’78 • Philip B.
Picotte ’08 • Edward Y. Soh ’94 • Andre Berot Spring ’88 • Thomas D. Steinle ’84 • Wendy Russell Tracy ’95 • Gregory D.
Woodworth ’81 Ex Officio Meg Storey Groves ’85, Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations and Annual Giving •
Ann Einsiedler Crumb ’71, Associate Vice President for College Advancement • Elizabeth Karnes Keefe, Assistant Dean
of Language Schools and Schools Abroad • Susan Regier, Director of Annual Giving

A WWII Air Force veteran, Conwell
“Deke” Abbott was honored in October
on his 103rd birthday as the oldest resident
at the New Hampshire Veterans Home. Gov. John Lynch
attended the party and brought him an official commenda¬
tion. Deke says he’s proud of having served his country in
Europe in WWII. Records show that he is also the oldest
Middlebury alum!

M in September a celebration was held on the
Bristol, Vt., town green in honor of three
residents turning 100, including Gertrude
Hewitt Lathrop. While at Middlebury, French was her fa¬
vorite subject and she enjoyed living in the Chateau. After
college she taught in a rural schoolhouse in Schaghticoke,
N.Y., saved up her money, and traveled to France on a
steamboat in 1937. She eventually ended up back in Bristol
with her husband and six children and lives in the house
she was born in.

I send my best wishes to my classmates!

—Class Correspondent: Alma Davis Struble, 147
West State St., Room 208, Kennett Square, PA

19348.

We received the following message from the
family of Harriet Coley Lins: “Regretfully
Harriet passed away on May 25, 13 days after
her 96th birthday, in Woodbridge, Va. She was able to cel¬
ebrate her 96th with her immediate family, including her
son, granddaughter, grandson, great-granddaughter, and
great-grandson.” At Middlebury she played baseball and
basketball, was on the Frosh Frolic and Sophomore Hop
committees, was a Kappa Kappa Gamma, was an associate
editor of the Handbook, and was on the news staff and was
an assistant editor on the Campus.

—Class Correspondent: Marshall Sewell, 20 Morning Glory
Ln., Whiting NJ 08739.

REUNION CLASS Once again I shall re¬
mind you that if there is no news sent to me
you will only learn about Eleanor Barnum
Gardner, Janet Randall Morgan, or me. Eleanor and
Janet are two I am in touch with often. In talking with
Janet in August, she was anticipating a week’s vacation
at Quonochontaug, R.I., which is where she lived before
moving to Cedar Mountain Commons. She was looking
forward to many walks on the beach and enjoying watch¬
ing the waves. • Also in August I had the pleasure of visiting
my daughter Lynne and husband David for several days.
They have a business called Standing Stone Perennial Farm

in Royalton, Vt. • On Saturday, August 18, we here at Wake
Robin had the opportunity to see and have a ride in antique
cars. There were about 20 cars of many makes and models,
mostly touring cars plus a few convertibles. Some of the
drivers took residents through Shelburne Farms. The pas¬
sengers enjoyed waving to people in the village and hearing
lots of cheering. We were also entertained by a fabulous
barbershop quartet. In the afternoon everyone was treated
to ice cream served on the porch of the community center.
• If you have access to a computer, go to blogs.middlebury.
edu/middmag/20i2/o9/i2/still-in-the-game/. You’ll see an
article about some alumni who are doing amazing things,
including our own runner, Bob Matteson!

—Class Correspondent: Mrs. Charles M. Hall (Margaret
Leslie), 100 Wake Robin Dr., Shelburne, VT03482.

Helen Brewer Chadwick writes that her
four years at Middlebury were some of her
best ones. She made lasting friendships with
classmates, going on trips with some of them for many
years. • Irene Fernandez Anderson has kept busy since
the death of her husband three years ago. He was a Marine
and reached the rank of major general. Now she is busy
with bridge, spite and malice (a card game), and bible
class. She is an avid reader and enjoys discussing books
with friends. For years she played golf three or four times
a week. I (Roger) have found that you should not give up
golf when you age unless it is really necessary. Ultimately
you will be able to shoot your age. I am 93 and can shoot
that. When I was 70 years old I could not shoot my age.
I presume this is one of the benefits of aging. • I chatted
with Joseph Foley, who is a retired physician-radiologist. I
urged him to attend our next class reunion. • Greta Adams
sent a letter on behalf of her father, Edward Grosenbeck.
She writes, “Dad has been retired from his job as school su¬
perintendent of Fort Ann Central School in upstate New
York for 34 years. In 1967 he bought property in Pittsford,
Vt., to be closer to Killington, his favorite ski area. When
he retired in 1978, he moved there permanently and is still
living in his own home. He sees his children and grandchil¬
dren regularly. He enjoys playing his electric keyboard and
spends hours at it. He is a member of the Proctor-Pittsford
Country Club and plays golf quite often when the weather
is nice. He uses a golf cart now and says the exercise these
days is getting in and out of it! Dad has a lot of fond memo¬
ries of his Middlebury days. He played in a band back then
to help pay college expenses and really enjoyed it. He talks
about driving across the ice on Lake Champlain to get to
gigs in New York during the winter. Thanks to Middlebury
College, a kid from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., fell in love with
Vermont and his heart is still there.” • I am making two

trips to Seattle, Wash., as two of my grandchildren are get¬
ting married there. My daughter lives there and is a law
school professor.

—Class Correspondent: A. Roger Clarke (arogerclarke@aol.
com), 7 Rundel Park, Rochester, NT 14607.

RC Anderson received a letter from
Martha Taylor Elliott, who says she found
the note about Ken Quackenbush in the
fall issue very interesting. She also mentioned that her late
husband, Leete ’38, had put together volumes of family
correspondence, including that which took place during
WWII. She may share some of it in this column. She re¬
counted her memory of sitting next to RC’s wife at Bread
Loaf during a reunion, which brought this reply from RC:
“Your mention of Bread Loaf stirs up memories. I worked
there the summers of 1938-1940 as the salad chef in the
kitchen for the summer school and Writers’ Conference.
My pay was $20 a month and I had every other Sunday
supper off (providing I set up the ingredients beforehand).
I got to see Robert Frost at a distance and had indirect
contact with him. At dinner early in the Conference week,
he loudly declared that he wanted his salad dressing made
with lemon juice rather than vinegar (no matter that it was
a vinaigrette). I complied, of course, but it was just another
burden to be met.” RC also told the story of how, in 1938,
W. Storrs Lee ’28, college editor at the time, sent him
out on foot to take motion pictures of the effect on East
Middlebury of the notorious hurricane of that year. “The
main street past the Waybury Inn was a torrent carrying
cars and debris. I watched as two men, at their peril, set a
dynamite charge at the bridge blocking the river. It blew
and the river returned to its course, though still at flood
stage. Walking to East Middlebury was not unusual for me
since I occasionally would walk from Middlebury through
Ripton to work at Bread Loaf, once arriving at dawn when
my kitchen duties usually began.”

Correspondent Margaret Shaub reports:
Wilton “Bud” Covey volunteers at Elderly
Services in Middlebury, a community organi¬
zation that sends n buses out around the county to bring
in people for meals and entertainment. Two of his grand¬
children also volunteer there during the summer. When
not volunteering he keeps busy around the house and
lawn, weather permitting. He and his wife recently cel¬
ebrated their 68th wedding anniversary. Congratulations,
Bud! • Jean Connor attended several open-to-the-public
events at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference last August.
She says, “Best of all was a talk by John Elder on Robert
Frost, given outdoors on the lawn at Frost’s writing cabin

58 Middlebury magazine

in Ripton. It was fun to get inside the small cabin and see
the spectacular view he had of pasture and mountains, a
place to inspire poetry.” • David Hammond reported he
was walking with a walker but hoped it was only temporary
Otherwise, he feels great. Kidneys are doing better. His
daughter lives with him, but he has a caretaker during the
day He attends church regularly and takes PT two or three
times a week. • Correspondent Elizabeth Wolfington
Hubbard-Ovens, along with her husband, continues to
enjoy life at their retirement community, where life is en¬
hanced by a lively program director. Elizabeth works on a
news sheet for the community, and she also belongs to a
book group, which keeps her mentally stimulated. • In con¬
clusion, I (Shaubie) will confess I don’t have e-mail, but
snail mail is still running and it would be great to hear from
any of you anytime!

— Class Correspondents: Elizabeth Wolfington Hubbard-
Ovens, 22 Inverness Dr., Apt. I-116, New Hartford, NT 13413;
Margaret Shaub, 139 Village Green Dr., Apt. 2, So. Burlington,
VT 03403.

As I write this there is much talk about
Hurricane Isaac, which brings to mind the
soggy start we had at Midd in 1938. I re¬
member wet clothes, droopy hair, and ruined shoes. Last
year Irene hit Vermont about the same time. I under¬
stand classes were canceled at some schools. We weren’t
so lucky! • Wondering how our Southern classmates fared
during Isaac, I checked with Susan Hulings Ottinger
in Baton Rouge, La. She lives on the second floor of a re¬
tirement community. There were extensive preparations
before the storm but there was no damage at her facility.
She has a grandson in Penobscot, Maine, who is becoming
an organic farmer, and she has other relatives around the
state. Susan remembers how they sweltered in 100-degree
heat at the 45th reunion. They decided to abandon their
planned finery and be comfortable in shorts for the ban¬
quet. • I had a nice chat with Beatrice Simpler Brain in
Spring Hill, Fla. Isaac brought them rain but no damage.
Bea reminded me that after Midd she went on to medicine
and psychiatry and had a busy life. Now she sees patients
one day a week and also does counseling on Medicare.
She has special memories of Contemporary Civilization
classes with Prof. Heinrichs. • I’m very sorry to report that
Betty Blanc-hard Robinson passed away on September
30. She was living in Keene, N.H., near her sons. At the
Convocation ceremony during reunion she received an
Alumni Plaque Award. It was a very special tribute to all
Betty accomplished and all that she and Phil did for our
class. In her absence her son David ’67 accepted the Plaque
for her.

—Class Correspondent: Nancy Hall Whitekouse
(whitehousenancy@ymail.com), 75 State St., Unit 61, Portland,
ME 04101.

REUNION CLASS Correspondent Jean
Jordan Sheild reports: Gertrude “Scotty”
Lacey Thornton stays very active in her
retirement community in Atlantic Beach, Fla., and she
travels a lot. During the summer she enjoyed a family
celebration in New York where they had a picnic by the
Hudson River. For her 90th birthday her family gave her a
party with 34 people and later they spent six days together
in St. Augustine. She also took a trip to St. Louis where
she enjoyed seeing the Arch as well as a museum dedicat¬
ed to the Indians of the Plains. Working on her Chinese
brush painting keeps her busy with monthly meetings of
the northeast Florida chapter of the Sumi-e Society of
America, and now she is looking forward to the annual
meeting in Minneapolis, where she plans to attend a three-
day workshop on how to be a judge. • Mowing grass was the
summer activity for Alice Landis Tonry. She has 250 acres
in Hampton Falls, N.H., of which 60 acres are dedicated to
Christmas trees. Her job is to mow the lanes between the
trees and she enjoys driving the tractor. She has 10 grand¬
children and six great-grandchildren, the newest born last
April. Daughter Abbie and family live nearby but she is still
in her own home. • Although she doesn’t drive any more,
Yvonne Golding Weinhardt still enjoys living in Dallas,
Texas. She was looking forward to her son coming from
the West Coast with his two children, seven and five. She
still keeps very much in touch with her relatives in France,
although she hasn’t been there for eight years. Her French
cousin did come to visit her and wrote back that it was
magnifque\ She reminisced that she had wonderful memo¬
ries of Middlebury. • Another of our classmates still in her
own home is Anne Willis, who lives in Manchester, Mass.
Her brother died in November, but his wife and daughter
still live next door. Niece Susan is with her now and does
the cooking for her since her eyesight is failing. They en¬
joy being right downtown close to the library and many
shops. Anne is active in the Women’s Club. Their special
activity is going on group walks in Beverly, which is only 10
minutes away They sometimes go to the Bennett Center
where they can do stationary bikes and weight machines.
• Sad news to report is the passing of Jane Botsford
Armstrong. Jane had a distinguished career as a sculptor
and received many national awards. In 2004 the National
Sculpture Society honored her with its annual award for
her entire body of work. She had produced more than 700
pieces over a span of 40 years and many had been shown
in prestigious art galleries and museums all over the world.
She began her career sculpting in stone—mostly marble—
but also worked in wood and bronze. Middlebury can be
proud—because of her love of poetry, her bust of Robert
Frost is at Bread Loaf. • Correspondent John Gale reports:
Bob and Ann ( ole Byington are doing well in Texas. Bing
continues to swim 20 laps in the pool each day; he says
90 to 100 degree temperatures are just too hot for golf.
He has started a weekly choral group at their retirement
community, with gradually increasing participation; they

use the lyrics of songs from the ’30s to ’50s, doing with¬
out the scores or a pianist. He says they remember the
tunes very well. Ann is busy crocheting tiny garments in
preparation for a new great-grandchild. • Dumont Rush
e-mails that wife Peggy remains his caregiver, manager,
social secretary, landscape gardener, snow shovel opera¬
tor, housekeeper, and dearest friend. He says that they
almost never turn on the TV and haven’t seen a movie for
at least 25 years. Peggy reads several books a week; he reads
the comics. He hasn’t had any recent contact with class¬
mates but maintains a close friendship with Deb Wales
at the College and the Cane Society and is involved with
current efforts to increase membership in the Society. As
for possible travel, Dumont comments that he shudders
at the thought of having to get on a commercial airliner
but does enjoy flying his friend’s Cessna 172. Peggy adds
that the friend is Middlebur/s organist emeritus, Emory
Fanning. • This past summer Page Uflford took a train to
Rhode Island on his birthday and went from there to a
son’s summer home in New Hampshire for a weekend with
family. He planned to fly to Atlanta, Ga., in September for
a visit with his other son’s family • Stu Walker’s activities
this past summer were mainly involved with caring for
wife Frances, who died in September, but he writes, “I did
get away for one brief European regatta on Lago di Como
in Italy, where I’ve always wanted to sail, but I found the
winds are extremely fluky, and being away from Frances,
I didn’t sail very well—fifth! I am working on a new book
(which JSG had asked about) about places to which we
traveled in Europe between regattas: Holland, France,
Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Spain,
Portugal—lots of history It’ll probably be called Travels
with Thermopylae , the name of my European boat. I still
plan to be in Middlebury next June.”

— Class Correspondent: Dr. John S. Gale (jsgale22@comcast.
net), 24 Beach Rd., Gloucester, MA 01930; Jean Jordan Sheild
(sheildfamily@gmail.com), 4408 Winnequah Road, Monona,

WI33716.

We send our best wishes to our classmates.
Send us your news!

— Class Correspondents: Ruth Wheaton Evans
(rrwe@verizon.net), 80 Salisbury St., Unit 603, Worcester, MA
01609; Elizabeth Ring Hennefrund (eliz.bet@earthlink.net), 397
Old Sherman Hill Rd., Woodbury, CT06798.

Greetings from Peterborough, N.H.! The
good news is that Roy and Bev Boynton
’48 Kinsey planned to attend the Alumni
College over Labor Day Weekend, learning from some
of Middlebur/s most inspiring professors, and Jessie
Woodwell Bush was looking forward to a family reunion
in September. Stay tuned for details to come. • The sad
news is that Ruth Coffins Shikn died on August 6, and
Jean “Nikki" Lflccjl Patterson on August 22. There will
be obituaries in a future issue of this magazine. • Shirley

Winter 20/j 59

ClassActs

Miller St( :irns and I enjoyed annual lunches at Sardi’s
with Ruth in her New York life, and Dottie Laux O’Brien
and Shirley remember annual reunions at the late Mary
I hitcher 11 ruby’s lakeside home in Middletown Springs,
Vt. We are proud of Ruth’s leadership as editor of the
Campus newspaper, and as a member of Mortar Board. • I
have been on e-mail with Nikki regularly since our 6oth re¬
union. We surely remember Nikki and Lil “O” with pigtails
flying on those ski slopes! Audrey Nunneniachcr Pertl
survives still wearing one pigtail but being challenged
with poor eyesight. She writes that while watching the
French Open tennis tournament, she followed the tennis
matches standing up close to the TV at eye level and then
she jumped back and forth with the flight of the balls. Her
energy persists! 'June Robinson Reenan has been living
in Elmira, N.Y., these six years since her husband died,
and she talked with Barbara “Baba” Boyden Wetherbec
recently—they’re both busy and cheering each other on. •
Betts Allen Sutman phoned to say she is “pushing 90” as
we all are. A new resident at her retirement community in
Basking Ridge, N.J., is Jean Salisbury. She’s the widow of
Richard “Sully” Salisbury, a Newjersey community lead¬
er and generous supporter of our class and Middlebury, who
died in 1995. She’s also the mother of Lisa, Class of 1979. •
Helen Smith Brock wav was present for the February
graduation of her grandson, Ross Brockway ’11.5, who gave
the student address to the senior class. His grandmother
says it was “a humorous and good speech, an affirmation
of a liberal arts education—to encourage lifelong learn¬
ing and always ask questions.” Ross has made a two-year
commitment to Teach for America. Helen and her hus¬
band were also at their farm in Wisconsin for the usual
five months, struggling to keep up with the weeds. • Jane
Elliott Brayden has moved back to Cooperstown and is at
3 Old School Court, Cooperstown, NY 13326, close to old
friends, the church, and family she missed during her two
years in a retirement home in Oneonta. She is still travel¬
ing. One trip was to Boulder, Colo., to see her grandson
get his master’s degree, and later in the summer she took
a cruise along the Maine coast. She’s aiming for that 70th
reunion. • Betty Adell McCord e-mailed from a trip with
her daughter in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, con¬
gratulating our class on its 70 percent participation in the
Alumni Fund. • At RiverMead, I am joined by Duke ’48
and Nancy Richardson Powell ’48, Connie Gibbs Oliver
’53, and we recently welcomed Barbara Flink Ewels ’46.
That put me in touch with “Birch,” Bette Bertschinger
Saul ’46 by phone from Gladwyne, Pa., and Jean Luckhardt
Stratton ’46 from Medford Leas, N.J. A male resident was a
classmate of Shirley Ste ams and the late Joanne Higgins
\\ < >lfley at Scarsdale High School. Lots of Blue and White
in my life! That’s a good thing! Let’s keep in touch! “Mew”
— Class Correspondent: Mary Elizabeth Wisotzkey McClellan
(maryliz124@comcast.net), 124 RiverMead Rd., Peterborough,
NH 03458.

Unfortunately we are at that age when
we’re losing dear friends, but two in one
week is very sad news. Phyllis Hewson
Evans died peacefully August 20 in New Rochelle, N.Y.
A wonderful mother and devoted friend, Phyllis loved
keeping in touch with her high school and college class¬
mates, church family members, and community friends.
She truly enjoyed writing cards and letters and receiving
them in return. Condolences are sent to Sheldon and the
family from her Class of 1946. • The same week Connie
Smith Carpenter died. She had been a resident of Wake
Robin in Shelburne, Vt., for several years. The class sends
condolences to John and her family. • Another sign of
the times for the Class of ’46: Many of us are now mov¬
ing to retirement communities. I think we are all tired of
trying to cope with houses and gardens and all their prob¬
lems. Sheila Schmidt Rowland has moved to the Lodge
in Middlebury. Her address is 350 Lodge Rd., Apt. 402,
Middlebury, VT 05753. Anyone within driving distance
please stop in, she says. • Mary Elizabeth Cummings
Nordstrom also has downsized. Her new address is 1
Huntington Common Dr., #234, Kennebunk, ME 04043.
She feels like she is back in Forest Hall, walking past well-
appointed parlors to the dining hall and occasionally to
writers circle and to French class. Husband Ev has sur¬
vived the ninth pneumonia and is learning to walk to the
dining hall in increments after using a wheelchair. They are
both very happy there. • Barbara Snow Casscdv is also on
the move again. Her new address is 6221A 27th Ave. NE,
Seattle, WA 98115. She and her lovely cat Daisy had been
with her daughter for a while. She is most interested in
knowing if there are any Midd alums in her area. • We had
a nice note from George, Natalie Fox’s husband. Natalie
is very happy at Sunrise Assisted Living in Wayland, Mass..
While there are no exciting trips, they are together about
every other afternoon, which is very pleasant for both of
them. She was able to talk with her only living brother,
who lives in Dublin, N.H., and her only local daughter
sees her weekly. She really enjoys both activities. George
says Natalie is doing very well and remembers many events
of Middlebury and Northfield School. • Jeanne Picard
Johnson and husband Art are enjoying their community
in Florida. It has several perks including a van that takes
them grocery shopping, and to clothing stores, doctors,
special events, museums, church, etc. Their apartment is
as big as the house they had in Charlotte, N.C., and costs
less so she feels they can stay there until that unknown
date with Heaven. She has had trouble with hearing and
eyes, but is fixing up both of them. Art has improved tre¬
mendously since they moved. Her only regret on moving
is the heat. She just can’t get out much. Her new address
is 201 Arbor Lake Drive, Unit 395, Naples, FL 34110. •
On June 30 Gloria Antolim attended the fair)

tale wedding of her grandson, David Keyser, to his lovely
bride, Rebecca Reichel. David is an engineer with the U.S.
Picatinny Arsenal. Rebecca teaches second grade and her

entire class attended the wedding. Many of Gloria’s chil¬
dren and grandchildren were in attendance making it a
memorable family reunion. She continues to enjoy the
active life at Piper Shores in Scarborough, Maine. She’s
particularly committed to the work of a dementia task
force there, charged with laying the groundwork for a spe¬
cialized dementia care unit in the retirement facility. She
says the joy of being with beloved classmates at the 65th
reunion last year still lingers on. • Peg Romer Jones says
her group of volunteers at the hospital has shrunk badly,
so she has been there four or five times a week. She was
hoping to get to New Hampshire in September and then
to California in November and she promises to report on
those trips. • Joanne Davis Hohmeister and Frank were
very busy in July taking their 15-year-old granddaughter
back and forth to Nutmeg Ballet inTorrington, Conn. Her
house in Stamford is too far away. The group danced at
Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts and had two performances
in Torrington. Joanne says it’s great fun to watch these
young people dance. • Living on Cape Cod Kay Craven
spent a lot of time at the beach this past summer because
it was so hot and humid. She was hoping to play some golf
during the cooler weather. • Ruth Rile) \\ endell recently
had repairs done around the house. The repairs made her
realize how much unneeded stuff she has been keeping.
She doesn’t think she could endure the necessary down¬
sizing to move. • Your correspondent will attest to the
fact that we all have too much stuff. I thought I had given
away, sold, and donated everything that I would not need.
Wrong! When box after box arrived at my new apartment,
I realized I still could have done without half of it. Trying
to find a place to put everything has been a chore. Having
said that, I really feel I will be very happy here. Everyone is
very friendly and if I wish, I could be busy 24/7 with bridge,
mahjong, dominos, etc., and all the exercise classes and
trips to wherever. My daughter Susan is about 15 minutes
away, as is my granddaughter and two great-grandsons.
—Class Correspondent: Janet Shaw Percival (wcpercival46@
gmail.com), 2-336 NW33th Blvd, Gainesville, FL32606.

In early August I sent out my quarterly re¬
quests for news. In answer I immediately
received two sad letters. The first was to
inform me that Margaret MacCormick de Forest had
passed away in July. The second was from Wil Britten,
Barbara “N iki" Verdicchio Britten’s husband. He wrote
that Alzheimer’s has caught up with his wife of 62 years and
while she does have some cognition remaining, it does not
include reading and writing. They are fortunate to live in an
excellent continuing care community but miss their former
visits to Middlebury. Viki occasionally will talk of her ex¬
periences there. I have sent Wil a note of encouragement.
•Jim Bruck s wrote that he is indeed among the living but
at the time I wrote to him he was suffering from a bout of
shingles, definitely not a pleasant experience. Other than
that he has no serious impairments. His wife Iris (Forst)

60 Middlebury magazine

’48 was recovering from a hip replacement and so was us¬
ing a cane. They’ve lived in the same house in White Plains,
N.Y., for over 60 years but the town is no longer a quiet
suburb. It’s a large and bustling city. Their two daughters
have both been married for over 35 years and each has two
grown children. Their eldest granddaughter has a doctor¬
ate in marine science from William and Mary. She recently
presented them with a great-granddaughter. They keep
busy with theater groups, visits to museums, attending
exhibits, etc. They have traveled extensively but no lon¬
ger do so. • Carl Parkinson enclosed a picture of himself
and his wife with his answer to me. They are a handsome
couple and look very young. He and his wife, Helen, have
been married 64 years and have had “a wonderful life.” Carl
very much wanted to attend the reunion but was unable to
make it due to health and expenses. They were planning to
go to a very beautiful resort in Orlando where they have a
time-share to celebrate Helen’s birthday. Their son lives in
Raleigh, N.C., and their grandson in Durham, N.C., but
they do not see them as often as they’d like as their “bosses
keep the thumb on them.” Carl is glad he doesn’t work any¬
more, as it is so stressful. • June Brooknian Kinney was
sorry to miss the reunion but does not travel like she used
to. She did visit her family in New York for a week and as
her four children, five grandchildren, and two great-grand-
kids live in the same vicinity, she was able to spend time
with all of them. She still lives on a lake in the small town
of Lake Placid, Fla., with her friend, Cliff, and their dog, a
Cairn terrier. She loves the town where there are beauti¬
ful murals depicting its history. As an outcome of that June
became interested in her own family history and has re¬
searched it and her genealogy. She and Cliff keep busy with
local clubs and many friends. • Like so many of us, Bobbie
Bates Lauterwasser had company all of July. In the third
week of August her entire family (14 in all) were to have
a reunion and get together for the first time in five years.
Their trip to Chicago for their grandson Steven’s college
graduation was the high point of the year. There were 1,100
in Steve’s class but huge screens had been placed either
side of the stage so they could actually see Steven receive
his diploma. Steve belonged to a motet group of 40 and
they were able to hear them perform. Bobbie’s husband
Herb had worked in Chicago years ago, but it was Bobbie’s
first visit and it was a real treat for her and daughter Jill.
They stayed in a motel right on Lake Michigan and every
morning walked along its shores. Everything about the
trip was great, especially the fact that son Bruce ’73 drove
them there. Their granddaughter Clara is a sophomore at
Northeastern Univ. in Boston, Gregory’s a junior in high
school, and Hannah is in the eighth grade. • Life is busy
and exciting these days for Jeanie Mace Burnell. Her
second granddaughter produced a baby girl recently. The
first granddaughter surprised her not long ago by leaving
her six-month-old baby boy in his carrier outside her front
door. Then she hid and when Jean opened the door to find
out what was going on, she jumped out from behind the

fence. They live in Oregon and Jean had no idea that they
were even in the vicinity. She thought it a fun way to have
visitors. • Natalie Simpson MacDonald and I spent a
delightful afternoon together on the Cape, having lunch,
talking about the world in general and about Midd friends
of long ago. She has a beautiful home on a pond in Dennis,
Mass., and treated me to a tour. We hope sometime to be
able to reune with the other classmates who have homes
on the Cape. • In answer to several requests for informa¬
tion about our class I offer the following: As far as some
of us at the reunion could determine there were 196 when
we started our freshman year. This number was increased
when several men returning from the war joined our class.
The classes they had belonged to had already graduated.
We had two transfer students. Class members reside in 22
states, north to south and east to west so we are well rep¬
resented nationally. There are still 71 of us alive to tell the
story. Two members suffer from Alzheimer’s. Letters to
one member have been returned “left without forwarding
address.” Eleven do not communicate for whatever reason.
The rest of us are as well and as active as our remarkably
advanced years permit so hurrah for the Class of 1947.
—Class Correspondent: Jeannette Atkins Louth (wmjalouth@
comcast.net), 99 Depot Road West, West Harwich, MA 02671.

REUNION CLASS Correspondent
Sandy Rosenberg writes, “Although
this may be the winter issue, Northern
California was ablaze last summer. The north part of the
state was ravaged by the worst series of forest fires in re¬
cent memory. The smoke drifted south over Sacramento
and older folks were advised to stay indoors. • Before we
know it, June 7-9, 2013, will be here. Please make your
plans to attend Reunion Weekend. Let’s make our 65th
class reunion a GRAND HURRAH. • Bart Nourse
sent in some news after contacting a few classmates: Dan
Petrizzi writes that the only golf he now plays is watch¬
ing PGA tournaments on TV and not understanding how
those pros can miss two- and three-foot putts. “I detest
those long putters that some of these pros use. I think they
will soon be outlawed. It takes very little skill to use them.
Just read the lie correctly and the ball will go in. I am now
92 and will be 93 in May. I have many health problems that
make travel too difficult and complicated. Wife Jennie and
I do manage to get to Florida, where we have a townhouse,
to spend the winter months. Once there, we stay put. The
only travel we do is mostly within our neighborhood for
shopping and medical visits, of which there are many.
We’ve been going to Florida since 1987 and we used to have
a very active life (golf, social activities, meetings with high
school classmates, gym, etc.) until 2005. Now we just en¬
joy the weather and visits with a few friends. However, no
complaints—we are happy to still be walking (I use a walker
and cane) on God’s green acre.” • Stew W ashburn writes,
“Since we sold our Connecticut home in 2005, Barbara and
I escape the winter each November by driving to our Sun

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Middlebury

City, Georgetown, Texas, abode. Each April, avoiding the
Texas summer, we make the return trip to our principal
residence, a house we built in 1971 as a vacation home in
Ludlow, Vt. Our daughter lives in Austin, Texas, and our
son, two granddaughters, and two great-ones (a third on
the way) are in Connecticut. Our golf rounds have become
rare—as in scarce and not well done. Healthwise we’re doing
okay. Recent replacement installations are functioning
well for me: a titanium left shoulder and a bovine aortic
valve. This past baseball season, maintaining my devout,
unquestioning loyalty to the Red Sox was extremely diffi¬
cult; still, provided it’s not a night game in California, I’m

Winter 2013 61

ClassActs

tuned in. See /all at our 65th!” • Bart received a phone call
from the former secretary of Jack Kofoed with the sad
news that he passed away last June. Our sympathy is sent
to his family. • Correspondent Elizabeth Bredenberg
reports: Camille Buzbv Lamont (better known to
many of us as “Buz”) was in a fog in Maine enjoying a fam¬
ily mini-reunion when she returned our postcard. Ted and
Buz celebrated their 60th anniversary in Puerto Rico visit¬
ing old haunts. She hopes to be at our 65th reunion next
June and let’s hope that all who are reading these notes are
planning to be there too. • Patricia Salmon Henderson
has cheerfully obliged us with another book recommenda¬
tion: Denis Johnson’s Train Dream. Pat said that she kept
thinking about dear Cook all the way through it, even
though it’s about life in the Northwest, not New England.
• Sylvia Smead Gallagher lives in a beautiful, mountain¬
side assisted living residence in Rutland, Vt., that is super
friendly, has lovely surroundings, and has a family-like staff.
She’s taking apart photo albums to reconstruct two for her
children ( This Is My Life) and is doing a third combining
all the travels and wilderness canoeing. • Too many death
notices have come our way recently: Susan McWilliams
Leighton’s husband, Roy, passed away. We also learned
that Margaret Mettler Schnorf died in December 2006
and Scott Pike died in August 2009. Sadly we must also
report that Judith Little Frew passed away on August 26
and Marya Steele Kellogg passed away on September
18. Our condolences are sent to all the families of the de¬
ceased. • Bev Boynton Kinsey, who lives in Arizona, has
been climbing local mountains and she and Roy ’45 were
off to California and then Wyoming, where they planned
to visit “Georgie” (Gloria Greenley Morgan). Bev swims
a quarter mile each morning, delivers Meals on Wheels,
and volunteers at the library. 'Torn ’49 and Janet Hubbard
Metcalf have lived in Hawaii for over 60 years. While Tom
was finishing up at Midd, Jan worked at the Placement
Office where she saw a notice of a need for teachers in
Hawaii, with interviews taking place in Burlington. Tom
had an interview and got a job—a two-year contract, but
he stretched that out for decades. All four of their children
live there, too.

— Class Correspondents: Elizabeth Bredenberg Ness
(elizabethfness@gmail.com), 412 N. Wayne Ave., Apt. 109,

Wayne, PA 19087; Sandy Rosenberg (inspacepro@aol.com), 628
Commons Dr., Sacramento, CA 97829.

Correspondent Dixon Hemphill reports:
Because Middlebury Magazine has periodical¬
ly contained a section entitled “War Stories”

I decided to contact the 10th Mountain Division Resource
Center to ask if they had any information about any of our
classmates, several of whom served in this unit during
World War II. Soon after my request the archivist with the
division wrote me about Phil Deane who, as our readers
may remember, died five years ago. Phil joined the Army
in 1943 an d joined the 10th Mountain Division at Camp

Hale in Colorado. He deployed to Italy in December 1944
and soon found himself in action against the German
army. His division’s mission was to break the so-called
“Gothic Line”—a 120-mile stretch of Italian mountainside
controlled by the Germans that blocked the Allies’ critical
route to Berlin. In April 1945 Phil was awarded the Bronze
Star for his actions at Monte della Spe. I had no idea he
had seen action but I do remember his telling me one day
that he was hiding from a German tank while standing
in a hole half filled with water in a snowbank. Suddenly
the tank stopped and the gunner slowly turned the tur¬
ret around in his direction. Phil wondered if this was the
end—but fortunately the gunner decided not to waste a
50-pound bomb on one single solder and the tank pro¬
ceeded to go on its way. The toll the war took on the 10th
Mountain Division was staggering. Over the 114 days dur¬
ing which the division was engaged in battle, nearly 1,000
soldiers were killed and more than 4,000 were wounded.
These numbers would prove to be the heaviest losses ever
sustained by a U.S. division for that length of time in com¬
bat. • I am having trouble contacting classmates. In some
cases their phone numbers are no longer in service (they
may have traded home phones for cell phones as many
people are doing these days) and in other cases there is no
answer. I sincerely hope others of you will respond to my
next request for information, telling me about a trip you
have taken, what your children and/or grandchildren are
doing, etc. For example, Lonny Walheim told me during
an earlier reunion that his son was an astronaut and I’d
love to tell you classmates more about his activities but I
am unable to reach Lonny! So in order to tell you what one
couple has done recently I will describe the wonderful trip
June and I took to Prince Edward Island this summer. We
traveled 1,100 miles by car with our daughter Chris and
her husband Fred, who did all the driving in his company
car. After crossing the nine-mile-long bridge between New
Brunswick and PEI, we found ourselves in one of the nicest
countrysides we had ever been in. On this island measuring
120 miles long and about 40 miles in width there was a lit¬
tle of everything—farms with pastures of corn and wheat,
neat houses with manicured lawns, great views of the land¬
scape, and picturesque fishing villages with a lot of boats,
many of which were built for catching lobsters. We enjoyed
the many kinds of seafood served in the restaurants we vis¬
ited—mussels, clams, oysters, crabs, and of course lobsters.
While there we visited the parents of a good friend who
lives near us in Falls Church, Va. Although we had never
met them before they greeted us like old friends and quick¬
ly made us feel like one of their family. She makes jewelry
out of shells that are found along the shore. After serving
us a delicious lunch of seafood chowder and homemade
biscuits, her husband, a former teacher who has written
three books, two about PEI and one entitled The Reluctant
Detective , showed us his homemade 26-foot sailboat.
Several years ago he sailed from his home north through
the Maritimes, down the St. Lawrence, through the Great

Lakes to Chicago, and partway down the Mississippi River
where his engine failed and he had to give up his plans to
complete the “Great Loop,” continuing south to the Gulf
of Mexico, around Florida, and back up the East Coast. If
any of you readers are considering a trip to Prince Edward
Island, be sure to let us know because June has written a
two-page letter describing our trip and all the places we
visited and the things we saw.

— Class Correspondents: Dixon Hemphill (dixonHi92$@cox.
net), 10910 Olm Dr., Fairfax Station, VA 22079; Rachel Adkins
Platt (rplatt27@gmail.com),74 Tobey Brook, Pitt ford, NT
1 4534 •

Please write or call us with your news!

— Class Correspondents: Corwin Elwell,

119 Harris Ave., Brattleboro, VT07701
(802.274.6871); Sally Peek Nelson, 80 Lyme Rd., #717,

Hanover, NH 07777 (607.647.1287).

Happy holidays, or post-holidays, as the case
may be. • Jim and Ann McGinley ’53 Ross wrote
a nice letter telling of their move to Eastview
Retirement Community right in Middlebury, having sold
their home in Cornwall. After 40 years in their home, with
downsizing they were confronted with many decisions of
“what has to go.” They are very happy with Eastview and
Jim says all of the folks there are great. They would be very
happy to show any classmates around. We will always re¬
member your lovely home where you and Ann hosted us at
many reunions, Jim. Our thanks to you both and we wish
you much happiness in your new home. • Betty Nelson
wrote from London while the Olympics were still going
on. Although she didn’t attend any of the events, she en¬
joyed constant coverage by BBC. She finds it a joy to be in
Wimbledon when the tennis is going on. She’s still work¬
ing full time in market research. After 50 years she ran for
board membership of the professional body—the Market
Research Society—and she was elected. Congratulations,
Betty! She was planning to welcome John and the late
Helen Reid Gilmore’s son James this autumn. He is
with Merrill Lynch in California and spent a summer in
her old company, Taylor Nelson. Betty also had trips to
Ripplecove, Ayer’s Cliff, in Quebec, and a week in Madeira
where her daughter has a time-share. She is already look¬
ing forward to our 65th reunion! • Gretchen Storer Evans
is still an esteemed (Lee’s word, not hers) ballet teacher
in Denver, Colo. “As a teacher, I work to instill strength
and confidence. Ballet is about dancing the music, not
to the music.” She teaches all ages and skill levels in a
positive learning environment. She also has designed and
patented a ballet skirt with unique design and fabric pat¬
terns. She takes a little time off to vacation at her “pad” on
St. George Island, Fla., for a bit of the sea. We remember
what a great skier Gretchen was, but she says she does
more skating than skiing now. Gretchen’s web site is www.
gretchenevansdesigns.com. • Barbara Pike Prinn recalled

62 Middlebury magazine

Le 200 de Mvog Betsi a Yaounde non loin du campus
de Middlebury au Cameroun. On peut y admirer des
babouins, des singes, des reptiles, des hyenes et d’autres
animaux qui semblant mieux s’adapter par rapport aux animaux des
zoos que nous connaissons.

a conversation she had with some of the student helpers at
our 6oth reunion. She was talking about the many changes
on the campus (elevators, etc.) and she asked one student
what changes he might expect when he comes back for his
6oth reunion. He quickly replied, “Oh, we’ll have space¬
ships here.” He may very well be right! Barb sent a poem
that she wrote that some of us may relate to. “What was
it that I thought about/and then remembered/and then
forgot about?/What kind of a problem may my forget¬
ting this/Have brought about?/Now that is something I’m
really up-wrought about!/Maybe—peace with the aging
memory/Is something I need to be taught about!” She says
that every so often she bursts into “Walls of Ivy” or “When
Gamaliel Painter Died.” Does that happen to any of you?
It does to me (Lee). • Betty Gale Woods enjoyed lunch
with Jim and Barbara Lukens Calkins and Ken ’50 and
Carolyn Sackett Coleburn in Montpelier, Vt. It was the
first time without the late Mary Krum Dale and she was
greatly missed. Betty is going to cruise down Columbia and
Snake Rivers on a paddleboat, and then go on to Seattle,
Victoria, and Vancouver. Sounds like a wonderful trip,
Betty. • Co-correspondent Beth Huey Newman spent
some of her summer driving to Williamstown, Mass., to
visit her daughter who is a professor at Williams College,
and then to Woodstock, Vt., where granddaughter Mercer
Mae was in a horse show. Beth was thrilled to see her rid¬
ing and jumping. She is 13 and riding and music are her
loves. • Joan Macklaier Birkett wrote from her home
in Invermere, B.C., Canada, at the head of the Columbia
River, where she is secretary of her 18-unit Strata. She
spends a few hours a week at the hospital arranging loan
equipment for postsurgery patients. Her younger daugh¬
ter is a performing musician with her husband in Thailand
on the island of Kohpang’nan. Joan and her daughter en¬
joy communicating by Skype and she remarked what a
miracle modern technology is! Joan gives us some thought-
provoking words: “What keeps me busy these days is
trying not to be busy and allowing moments that need
attention to present themselves. Learning more coping
strategies to weather the rough times, i.e. awareness of na¬
ture and tuning in to where friends are at without feeling
the need to fix things. Learning to be a better listener with¬
out judgments. Being ready to reach out when needed.” •
News was received that Bill Mcllwain passed away on
September 20. Our sympathy goes to his family, especially
widow Lois (Rapp) ’50. • You are all very important to us
and we love hearing from you. Eventually, we hope to hear
from ALL of you. Whether your news is big or little, or if
you have some memories or thoughts to share, memorable
professors, classes, or friends, please keep in touch. We
wish you all good health and happiness and best wishes for
2013. Lee and Beth

—Class Correspondents: Lee Webster McArthur (rlmca@
verizon.net), 725 Willow St., Cranford, Njf 07016; Beth Huey
Newman (bethhueynewman@gmail.com), 300 Woodhaven Dr.,
Apt. 2509, Hilton Head, SC 29928.

Correspondent Barbara Cummiskey Villet
reports: Winter is a time to read and so I
was struck by the notion we ought to share
our best reads with each other. This came about in part
because I finally connected with Polly Norton Polstein,
whose initial response was “I live a quiet life.” But quiet
time is reading time and so I decided to begin a new search
for what all of you are reading. Polly nominated a reread of
Thoreau’s In the Maine Woods, since that’s where she lives,
but she also introduced me to Barry Unsworth’s work. Her
most recent was Quality of Mercy— and almost as an after¬
thought, she enthusiastically offered The Aeneid. So the
book world still absorbs her and between taking her dog
for a walk and having her morning swim (who says she’s
not active?), she also caught me up on her retirement from
years of important work on the board of her local library
and the Maine Humanities Council’s program of con¬
tinuing education. She still attends its programs, but no
longer helps to organize them. • I also heard from Caryl
Entwistle Huffaker, who remains active as a journalist
and critic. Here she is in her own words: “Last February we
drove down the East Coast to Naples, Fla., visiting eight
old friends, and they do get older—one we hadn’t seen in
24 years. In July I was in Lenox, Mass., to hear the Boston
Symphony and go to all the grand theater groups and then
was off to the Glimmerglass Opera near Cooperstown,
N.Y. August was beach time on the Outer Banks, and in
September I was off to Michigan to see grandchildren. Bill
is still working, making hawser-sized ropes, and I’m still
writing for two local weekly papers. My beat is museums,
reviewing plays, art openings, and human interest, which
I adore doing. I walk with a cane from my accident three
years ago, but at least I’m walking.” • Correspondent Mary
Halsted Francouer writes: We are sad to report the death
of Betty Parker Burrows on August 17. During our ju¬
nior year Betty, Caryl Huffaker, the late Lindy Pahner
Christie, Mary-Lou McLeod Aagaard, and I lived in the
Hillcrest Annex. Betty was fun and she was brilliant! That
year she added a foreign language to her demanding cur¬
riculum to see if she could break her straight-A record and
get a B. As usual, she had to settle for an A. In her adult
life she worked as a research chemist at the U.S. Army Fort
Detrick biomedical development and research lab. In her
spare time she was an adventure-seeking amateur pilot. •
Correspondent Chuck Ratte reports: Let’s first send Bill
Huey and Ken Nourse a bigTHANK YOU for keeping us
well informed concerning the whereabouts and events of
our classmates for the past five years. • Clay and Barbara
Eckman Butzer have been constant companions since
they met at registration in 1948. Clay was my roommate
and I’ve been kidding him about this instant attraction
and 60-year amorous relationship ever since. He never
gave any of us guys a chance to date her. Would you believe
those two are now parents of four children, grandparents
to 10, and have recently become great-grandparents? Two
grandkids have already completed college and two joined

the Marine Corps. One completed a tour in Iraq and one
is a career Marine with the USMC Air Wing. The Butzers
are retired (whew, about time!) and five in Lancaster, Pa.,
Barbara’s hometown. In August they were looking for¬
ward to a little vacation in their summer place in Avalon,
N.J., where they planned to have breakfast with Hank
Draghi and wife Joan. Hank could give them a rundown
on our 60th reunion, which they were unable to attend. •
John and Barbara Becker Taylor celebrated their 60th
wedding anniversary last July in Berkeley, Calif. The cel¬
ebration was attended by almost 100 people and included
special preparations by 1) son Bob, who displayed pho¬
tographs of their years of marriage with sheets of paper
attached for attendees to identify themselves; 2) son Bill,
a computer whiz, who rigged-up a slide show that showed
193 pictures of Mom and Dad from infancy through their
days at Middlebury; 3) daughter Susie, who provided a tape
of 60 years of music oldies but goodies; and 4) daughter
Cathy, who guided the preparation and execution of the
ceremony. Their adoring children all live within an hour’s
drive from them. John had a career as a city manager
and served in cities from Kansas to California. • Charlie
“Chip” Archibald was one of the first to respond to my
request for information on their lives. I found Chip’s ac¬
tivities over the years very interesting. Chip has been a
Baptist minister, a Methodist minister, and had a long ca¬
reer as a Unitarian Universalist minister. Now he serves as
an associate minister to a congregation in Cambria, Calif.
Now, tell me, did you ever think of Chip as a minister as
you labored over test tubes with him in the chemistry
lab? Chip continues to correspond with Don Beck, who
lives in Connecticut. Chip’s e-mail is charlieuu@gmail.
com. Give him a buzz, you’ll enjoy a fun conversation.
His final remark: “At 87 I am quite content with my life.”
That’s nice! • It was with sadness we learned of the death
of Bill Cronin on July 21. He was well known and liked and
was perhaps best known as a letterman athlete and for his
prowess on the hockey rink. • Nancy Rielle ’82 sent this
note about her father, the late Charlie Rielle: “I missed
visiting the Class of ’52 reunion tent last year. My dad and
I were lucky enough to share the same reunion cycle and
enjoyed visiting each other’s tents to catch up with each
other’s Midd pals. I was planning to keep up the tradition
in Dad’s memory but had to miss my first reunion ever.
I’m pretty sure it was the first Dad ever missed as well. He
cherished his ties to Midd—I’m sure he was there with you
in spirit!”

— Class Correspondents: Mary Halsted Francoeur (gulliverf@
sbcglobal.net), 456 Gurney Ave., Lake Bluff, IL 60044; Chuck
Ratte (cr6781@gmail.com), PO Box 263, Saxtons River, VT
03134; Barbara Cummiskey Villet (villetb@sover.net), 208
Eagleville Rd., Shushan, NT 12873.

REUNION CLASS Elizabeth “Bifly”
Darling Sherburne summers in Vermont and
spends winters in St. Petersburg, Fla., where

Winter 20/3 63

SHORT STORY

A Rock Hard Place

A stretch of icy weather put a hitch in the ski-jump preparations for Winter
Carnival back in 1954. Here's how the intrepid Dick Powell ’56 responded.

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64 Middleburv magazine

BY MARK ALAN STAMATY

ClassActs

her son lives, near the Academy of Senior Professionals
at Eckerd College. In summer she enjoys camping on
Lake Dunmore. A group of Midd classmates, including
Ann McGinley Ross, Anne Coleman Zehner, Nancy
Hamilton Shepherd, and Pat Hamilton Todd get to¬
gether for lunch. Bifly also hears from Sue Taylor and
sees Jean Overhysser Arneberg in Clearwater, Fla., and
Marge McCallum Smith’s daughter in Florida. Bifly is
on our Reunion Committee and encourages us all: “Please
come back to our 6oth reunion!” She’s thinking of a mes¬
sage board for classmates at reunion, and planning for
speakers and activities. She urges classmates to send in
ideas. She reminds us to come visit “where great things
are happening” and she encourages us all to keep healthy!

• Marge Smith lives in Portland, Ore.; three of her chil¬
dren are there also and one is in Seattle. One grandchild
considered going to Middlebury but decided it was too far.
The Japanese tsunami came within 80 miles of Portland!
Marjorie enjoys the beach, walking, lots of reading, and
traveling. Two summers ago she took a river cruise from
Amsterdam to Budapest. She sends greetings to our class
and says, “Enjoy each day as it comes and make new memo¬
ries.” ‘John Nash says he left Midd with a lot of regrets;
he loved his time at Midd! He left after two years and
transferred to Harvard, where he considered the ministry.
He met his wife in 1957 and since 1959 they have lived in
Duxbury, Mass., where they bought a 1737 house and barn
for under $5,000! It was “the beginning of a wonderful
life.” They have a son Tim who works for Bank of America
and a daughter Emily and a grandson and a granddaughter.
In 1948 John and three friends drove across the country,
worked in the wheat harvest in Kansas, and picked apples
in California north of San Francisco. He stays in touch
with AI Kimbell and Don Peach. John has not returned
to a class reunion. • W. Ransom Rice lives in Lincoln,
Vt., where he is pastor emeritus of the United Church of
Lincoln, 15 miles up the road from Middlebury! He has
been in Lincoln for 23 years and retired 10 years ago but still
does a lot of parish work. His wife has a counseling service
job in Addison County They have four grown-up children,
three of whom went to Midd, as did his grandfather! Their
sons live in Minneapolis, Durham, N.C., and Middlebury,
and their daughter lives in South Carolina. He sends greet¬
ings to our class and hopes to see everyone next year at
the 60th! • Sarah Hoover Tullis lives in Timonium, Md.,
where she worked for 40 years for the Baltimore County
Library. She is still living in her home. Since her retirement
she has played duplicate bridge twice a week. She also plays
with a singles bridge group Mondays and Fridays. She’s a
volunteer at a family crisis center, where she takes food to
abused women and children and assists them in finding an
apartment and a job and with not returning to the abuser.
Clients may stay at the long-term housing center for up
to two years. The PEO Sorority for Higher Education
provides money for special needs. There’s a need for short¬
term and long-term housing for drug users who have come

out of rehab and for women who have come out of prison.
Sarah coordinates items needed for residents’ apartments.

• Barbara Connor McLaughlin from Portland, Maine,
is living in Southbury, Conn. Her health is good and she
plays bridge four days a week. She also likes to read and
she enjoys going out with friends. Barb sees a couple of
Midd folks who were two years ahead of us. She returned
to Midd in 1955 for Homecoming but not since. Barb also
stays in touch with Abby Kreh Gibson. One of her sons
is in L.A. and another in Brewster, N.Y. • From Shelburne,
Vt., Bob Kelly writes, “I retired from and sold my CPA
practice, Kelly, Jacobs & Assoc., in 1988 and somehow got
involved in a mail-order company, Bridge Building Images,
which sold spiritual and religious images in lots of different
formats, e.g. note cards, holy cards, plaques, etc. I bought
the owner out and continued the business until about 1998
when my son, Andrew, and a friend bought us out. They
were both CPAs working in Boston and were sick of ac¬
counting. We were doing okay in the business, but not
great. When I sold, the Internet had not yet arrived but it
did shortly after. The boys really took advantage of it and
have grown the business a lot faster than we could have.
The name of the company is now the Vermont Christmas
Company and can be seen at Vermontchristmasco.com.
We continue to work some for the company as needed. I
still play squash twice a week, tennis once, and golf about
twice. My skiing at Mad River has been reduced to a few
times a year and last year I went just once as Vermont had
practically no snow and Mad River does not make snow.
I’ve been fortunate, so far, that my health has allowed me
to keep going. We don’t go south for the winter because we
don’t like Florida. On a few occasions we have gone to San
Juan or Costa Rica for a week to enjoy some beach time
and golf in a climate that always seems warm with usually
no rain.”

— Class Correspondent: Janet Bradley Harris (drharris$2@
gmail.com), The Meridian, #5 46, 3455 South Corona St.,
Englewood, CO 80113.

Correspondent Nancy Whittemore
Nickerson reports: From my co-corre¬
spondent comes the following e-mail which
proves that 8o-year-olds still have a lot more adventures
to consider. Diane Schwob Strong writes, “We recently
returned from the most unique and extraordinary trip I
have ever taken. Cy and I flew to Alaska on a fishing and
wildlife trip run by an organization called Great Alaska
Adventure, on the Kenai Peninsula (about two hours
southwest of Anchorage), and believe me it was a great
adventure! We spent the first two days and one night at a
remote bear camp, where we arrived via a six-seated bush
plane, which landed on the shore of Lake Clark. There,
we spent the night in a tent and were able to view lots of
brown bears in the wild, fishing at the confluence of three
rivers. We saw a mama bear and her twin cubs—she would
catch a fish and bring it to the cubs, who squabbled over

it! The bears were in the process of storing up food before
they moved into the mountains to hibernate for the win¬
ter. After returning to the lodge, we spent the next week
fishing for salmon (silvers), casting for rainbow trout (fly¬
casting), on the Kenai River, and deep-sea halibut fishing
in Prince William Sound out of Seward. In addition to
the bears, we also viewed humpback whales, bald eagles,
moose, puffins, seals, otters, and huge glaciers! The beauty
and untouched scenery of the mountains that surround
you everywhere with a lot of snow, and to be on and see
the rushing glacial rivers and the huge lakes are sights
that will remain with me always.” • Unfortunately, Diane
has to give up being my co-correspondent because of new
responsibilities and I thank her so much for sharing these
duties with me for the last three years. NOW, it is up to
one of you to step forward and help me out—PLEASE! • As
seems to happen more often than not now, I report with
sadness the deaths of several of our classmates—most re¬
cently Dick Bourbeau in July and Jane Coffin in August.
We also send sympathy to Suzie Olsen Brown and Lois
Wanstall Kaufmann, whose husbands Temp Brown and
Don Kaufmann have passed away. • Peter Simonson sent
in this note: “When I recently went in for eye surgery, I
discovered I was in good hands because the highly recom¬
mended doctor turned out to be a Midd graduate also.
Jordan Sterrer ’85 of Eyecare Medical Group in Portland,
Maine, removed cataracts from both my eyes and the re¬
sults were highly successful!” Check out a photo on page
83. • From Toronto, Canada, Patricia Rice Cunningham
sent an update: “I only stayed three years at Middlebury,
accumulating credits in required courses for entry into my
training course at the University ofToronto (UofT). I grad¬
uated in 1957 from the Art as Applied to Medicine (AAM)
program at UofT; was married in 1957 and had two children.
I established the medical illustration unit at the University
of Dar es Salaam Medical School (Tanzania). In 1974 I was
appointed chief medical artist at Sunnybrook Hospital in
Toronto and concurrently was cross-appointed assistant
professor in the AAM program (renamed Biomedical
Communications). I divorced and became a naturalized
Canadian in 1977 .1 retired in 1998. Just for fun (and it was!)
I attended the Middlebury Language School summer ses¬
sion in French in 2008 at age 75. Now I enjoy gardening,
learning t’ai chi, hosting casual bridge twice a month, com¬
piling a photographic record of fauna with which I share
my property, and writing (see www.magazine.utoronto.ca/
writers-circle/psum-patricia-cunnigham).” Yes, her name
is spelled wrong in the URL!

— Class Correspondent: Nancy Whittemore Nickerson (forger®
prodigy.net), 4 Osprey Ln., Mystic, CT06333.

Correspondent John Baker reports: John
Ackerman and wife Helen (Starr) ’56 are still
living in Minneapolis. He retired from full¬
time ministry some years ago and spends time writing and
“serving as a spiritual guide to individuals and a consultant

Winter 2013 65

ClassActs

to congregations.” John had a bout with lung cancer but
seems confident that it is in remission. (It always amused
me that at our 25th reunion we had a singing session in
Pearsons and the Reverend John and I traded off-color
limericks. We called it a draw well after midnight.) •
Garland Corey retired in 1995 after a career in “laboratory
management and quasi-legal areas, especially in the patent
field.” He and wife Jean travel and find time to spend with
their three children. Check out his picture in the 50th re¬
union book. (I assume he’s the one on the left.) • Robert
De Lisser retired after 33 years as a captain in the U.S.
Naval Medical Corps, where he served as a surgeon. He
mostly enjoys his leisure and local involvements on the gulf
coast of the Florida Panhandle. • Alan Frese spent a week
in the summer on Block Island with five friends (and two
dogs). He continues to sail and has been involved with two
worthy organizations: 1) The New England Society of New
York, which provides scholarships to students in New
England colleges; and 2) The Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’,
Coast Guard, and Airmen’s Club, founded in 1919, which
fulfills its mission as the only private organization in the
New York area to provide accommodations at subsidized
rates and club-type facilities for servicemen and service-
women, military retirees, and veterans and their families
visiting NYC. • Marcie Garcia lives in Tampa, Fla., but
manages to escape with wife Betty to their tree farm in
the Adirondacks. He sent some updates from the past year
and a half. “In February 2011, while taking a few warm-up
runs at West Mountain, a Midd Panther ski jacket went
flying by. When I caught up with him at the bottom, it was
Olympian Tommy Jacobs ’51. What an afternoon—Fred
Neuberger ’50 stories, Olympics, war stories, Midd ski
jumping, and incredible skiing. He was outskiing everyone
on the hill. On December 31, 2011, Betty and I shuttered
Bet-Mar Corp., our postretirement international fertilizer
consulting company, and the fun began. In February 2012
our guys ski club plus one skied at the Snow Bowl: myself,
son Dr. Michael ’84, grandsons Michael Fernandez and
Michael Garcia, daughter Sara Garcia McCormick ’92, and
guest extraordinaire Bill Skiff’54. In June Betty and I host¬
ed high school graduation parties for grandchildren and in
July we had an extended Garcia family reunion at the Villa
Garcia Farm in the Adirondacks with 56 in attendance. In
August we celebrated our 54th anniversary.” They have
kept in touch with Dave and Jo-Jo Kittell Corey. • Bill
Gray retired from a translation company he founded a
number of years ago called William Gray Enterprises. He
lost wife Diane a few years ago but still lives in Sharpsburg,
Md., where he raises Simmental cattle. (He also grows
apples and grapes.) • Frank Gianforti retired from Xerox
a number of years ago. Since he was not ready to retire, he
took over the bookkeeping of an auto repair operation in
Branford, Conn., where he and his wife have been living.
He had fun doing it but is now really retired and is enjoying
life on the Connecticut shore. • Walter Griffin is living in
Brevard, N.C., with Gerri, his wife of well over 50 years.

He spends less time traveling and more time reading. In
1990 he started reading every book by every male mystery
writer from A through Z. He then continued with women
mystery writers—also from A to Z. (And I thought I was an
avid reader!) • Alden Lank lives in Hingham, Mass., with
wife Connie. He retired 14 years ago and they are enthu¬
siastic travelers. They enjoy cruises—mostly abroad, but
they recently did a cruise from New York to Montreal.
They built a chalet in Switzerland in 1979 when they were
living there and they gather with their extended family
every Christmas. He also has time to concentrate on his
longtime hobby of bird-watching and nature photog¬
raphy. • Earl Samson writes that he and wife Susan are
selling Sakonnet Vineyards. After 25 years developing the
brand name and enjoying a wonderful lifestyle in Little
Compton, R.I., they are headed for retirement—“finally!”
• As your class correspondent, I have enjoyed reaching
out to our classmates and will continue to e-mail and call
more of you. • We are sorry to report that several of our
classmates have passed away: Willard Gamble on June 6,
Catherine Sexton Eckhof on June 24, Robert Studley
on August 7, and William Admirand on October 5. Our
sympathy goes to their families. • On a positive note, as we
near our next decade in 2013, we would very much like to
hear from you about your reflections on turning 80. Please
just send us an e-mail.

—Class Correspondents: John M. Baker (jmbaker@bestweb.
net), 76 Spooner Hill Rd, South Kent, CT 06785; Sally
Dicker man Brew (sdbrewi@mindspring.com), 629 Benvenue
Ave., Los Altos, CA 94024.

Classmates are keeping busy, or enjoying the
quieter side of life. From Shrewsbury, Vt.,
Hull Maynard writes, “A very busy summer
at High Pastures B&B. We had major parts of two wed¬
dings at our farm. One included 175 people that came in
45 cars, which parked on various parts of the farm accord¬
ing to ‘infirmities.’ They danced until midnight and had a
wonderful time. Anybody interested can find our website.

I play tennis in the early a.m. three times a week with a
very challenging group of 12 players. Taffy (Joanna Taft
Maynard ’58) and I enjoy our five grandchildren, espe¬
cially playing tennis with them on our court.” Hull called
me (Judy) on the phone and we chatted about the damage
from Storm Irene one year ago, which is still very evident
all over Vermont. • From Ron Potier we heard, “I continue
to read and attend events surrounding the 150th anniver¬
sary of the Civil War. I’ve learned more history than I ever
did in Sleepy Davidson’s class!” He was hoping to see
classmates at Homecoming, which was an important date
for him as it was the 60th anniversary of the founding of
the Dissipated Eight. • Mimi Schwarz Reed writes, “In
August I visited Marian Moran Brownlie at her beauti¬
ful waterfront home on Shelter Island, N.Y., as I do every
year. We enjoyed many activities on the North and South
Forks of Long Island. During dinner at the Shelter Island

Yacht Club with Marian’s daughter, Heather, Middlebury
came up in the conversation as we enjoyed the sunset, sail¬
boats, and the water. Marian and I send greetings to our
classmates.” • Dick Powell plays a very significant role
in his large community and describes it this way. “I head
up a group of 74 emergency volunteers in my community
of 3,000 active adults. In May a fellow golfer collapsed
on our community’s golf club practice range. No breath.
No movement. Bystanders knew he needed CPR but
didn’t know how. They knew to call 911, but their cell
phone didn’t work. Someone ran a quarter mile to make
the call. A pro-shop employee drove down with an auto¬
mated external defibrillator (AED), tried CPR, but failed
to use the AED. Fire and rescue arrived over 10 minutes
after Jim fell. They took over but five days later, he died. A
close buddy of Jim’s asked me to start classes on CPR and
using the AED. We purchased mannequins and an AED
training device for hands-on training. Over the course of
two months I taught CPR and AED to 250 neighbors in
20 separate sessions. The pace has subsided but we con¬
tinue to teach these life-saving skills. We charge nothing
for the training and give no certificates. We’ve been sup¬
ported by two superb DVDs produced by the Univ. of
Arizona, which instruct the ‘continuous chest compres¬
sions only* form of CPR. No rescue breaths. Google the
UofA website. We are all ‘in the zone’ and should know
how to do these skills.” Great dedication and important
work. • Betty Mitchell Munisoglu writes, “After fighting
with serious medical issues for the last several years, my
husband of 53 years passed away in May. In his prime he
was a life force to be reckoned with, and he enriched my
life in countless ways. I miss him greatly. I’m still working
full time as a court commissioner and watching with dis¬
may as the California state budget crisis wreaks havoc on
the state courts and adversely impacts the court’s ability
to administer justice. When not in court I am a volunteer
with the Constitutional Rights Foundation, coaching a lo¬
cal high school mock trial team (the kids are amazing!). I
also continue the nonprofit named after my son, who died
of cancer at 14. Our current focus is on supporting devel¬
opment of a Teen and Young Adult Cancer Center program
at UCLA—the first of its kind in the U.S. It was inspired by
the success of the Teenage Cancer Trust in the U.K. and
is also supported by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend
(The Who) of rock star fame. So, as life goes on I am do¬
ing my best to do well by doing good! My warmest regards
to you and Dick. Thanks for doing such a diligent job of
reaching out and keeping up!” • Check page 68 to see an in¬
teresting autobiography by Ron Lawson! And check page
64 for a story about Dick Powell! • Dick and Judy send
best wishes to you all.

—Class Correspondents: Dick Powell (repowell)5@comcast.
net), 15518 Ryton Ridge Lane, Gainesville, VA 20155; Judy
Phinney Steams (judyasteams@att.net), 55 Carriage Dr.,
Glastonbury, CT06055.

66 Middlebury magazine

Ron ’56 and Kathy Platt Potier enjoyed
“Cousins Camp” with their three children,
three children-in-law, and six grandchildren
on Lake Sunapee, N.H. Swimming, tubing, waterskiing,
and fishing were happy alternatives to the omnipresent
electronic devices. They parted after seven days of to¬
getherness still on speaking terms. • Jane Smith Brekke
writes, “Son Kris made a reservation at north Lake Tahoe
for a few days and that was wonderful. Darrell and I did
two hikes along the Tahoe Rim Trail and then we all en¬
joyed the lake and activities around there. Kris, his wife,
and their two sons were there also.” • Your continuing
co-correspondent Gail Bliss Allen writes, “After 50-plus
years in Northern California, I have moved to Federal Way,
Wash., to be near my son Caleb and his family. I’m in an
assisted living facility within walking distance to the Silver
Sneakers senior program at 24 Hour Fitness. The commu¬
nity center here has many activities and I volunteer as a
math tutor. I’m still downsizing boxes of‘stuff.’ If you get
to the Seattle area, contact me at 206.212.6482. It was my
pleasure to work with Kathy Potier for the past five years
as co-correspondents. Your new class co-correspondent is
Barclay Johnson, who will give a catch-up bio next time.”
—Class Correspondents: Gail Bliss Allen (gballen@comcast.net),
Emeritus at Steel Lake, 31200 23rdAve. S, #308, Federal Way,
WA 98003; Barclay Johnson (johnsonbarclay@optonline.net),

319 Thomaston Rd.,Apt. 63, Watertown, CT06799.

REUNION CLASS We all owe Ann
Ormsbee Frobose a huge thank you as she
signs offhere as our longtime class correspon¬
dent: “Dear classmates, with some regret and some relief I
bid you farewell as class correspondent. Our ’58 news is in
the good hands of Sonny Wilder and Mary Roemmele
Crowley. From ’58 to ’68 Phil (Ormsbee) and I had the job.
We sent you postcards to mail back to us. You were highly
faithful in returning the cards. I remember rubber-banded
stacks of them. I wish now that I had saved them to share
some memories of those long ago Kennedy and Johnson
years. Actually the news was chiefly babies and jobs. Then
at our 25th reunion I joined Joe Mohbat for 29 more years
of service. It has been an ongoing pleasure keeping track
of our milestones and many travels (and grandchildren).
Better than the news itself have been the phone calls with
many of you. Our deep Middlebury roots make conversa¬
tions lively. I spoke with Ginny Davis Irwin recently. She
reminded me of Chaplain Scott’s words as he welcomed
us as freshmen. He described our many differences and
ended ‘but you all have one thing in common—you each
chose Middlebury.’ And therein grew a lasting bond we
probably never expected.” • Lee Endres, professor emeri¬
tus at Cal Poly, e-mailed us during a visit with Margaret
Lascelle Loghry in Tucson, Ariz.—part of a bird-watching
trip in the area—and said that he still continues to do a bit
of teaching. And more than that—he still plays basketball!
Last May he and wife Valeric (Brown) took their n-year-

old granddaughter on a trip to Spain, Italy, Santorini, and
Athens. • Mona and Dick Johnson had challenged their
two oldest grandsons to be reasonably fluent in Spanish
by their senior year in high school. They complied, and
the four spent last July exploring the history and architec¬
tural wonders of Spanish cities and countryside. Having
the teenagers’ perspectives proved an unexpected bonus.

• Chuck Rice e-mails, “I’m still working and will be for
the foreseeable future in the sports and entertainment
insurance business. Mary and I still live in Buffalo, N.Y.,
in the spring and fall. Summers are spent in Canada in the
Muskoka region of Ontario. We have a home on a large
island, a family compound, which has been a haven for
the family for over 60 years. I can easily work from there,
which I do until about noon each day, then relax with wa¬
terskiing, knee boarding, odd maintenance jobs, and flying
a float plane with one of my friends. Winters are spent
on Jupiter Island in Florida, working from there as well.
Last winter I took flying trapeze lessons and am continu¬
ing them this winter as well, along with high-wire lessons.
Totally far out experience! (Check out the online story at
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middmag/2012/09/12/still-in-
the-game/.) Some of us old folks go to the early bird dinner
specials, and some of us, well, do other things—you’ve
got to stay in the game. Daughter Joan ’88 lives in Buffalo
across the street from us and son Graham ’97 lives in
Burlington, Vt. My brother Randy ’53 lives in East Lincoln,
Vt. We make annual trips to Vermont and always include
Middlebury—it’s a nice homecoming for all of us. I plan
on being at our 55th.” • Frank Hurt writes, “March 2012
found me in Oberwiesenthal, Germany, for the Masters
World Cup in cross-country skiing, where I competed in
both the classic and freestyle disciplines in the 75-79 age
group. John Brodhead ’66 and wife Gina Campoli were also
part of the U.S. team, competing in their age groups. With
the paucity of snow last winter, training for most of the
U.S. contingent was daunting. However, John, as the ski
director at Craftsbury’s (Vt.) Nordic center, Gina, and I,
10 minutes from Gunstock’s (N.H.) Nordic center, all ben-
efitted from snowmaking. Lucky we three! In January, at
weekly time trials in the Mt. Washington Valley I became
reacquainted with Betsy Strong Kent ’53. In other Midd
connections, in 20111 tried to find the ’58 cross-country ski
team, winner of the NCAAs for that event, to invite their
company for Germany. Sadly, none were available, and one,
Helge Kjekshus, had died of Alzheimer’s in 2009, I dis¬
covered later. As Midd’s address for Helge was inactive, I
enlisted Google and a friend’s Norwegian cousins in the
search. Google found two people named Helge Kjekshus.
One was in Tanzania nine years as a senior lecturer in po¬
litical science at the Univ. of Dar es Salaam and the other is
a concert pianist and has toured the world and U.S. to wide
acclaim. The former was our Helge and the latter is his and
wife Nadia’s son! And, with thanks to the Norwegian cous¬
ins for Nadia’s address, she sent this dated bulletin copy:

‘Helge Kjekshus and Henning Kraggerud will perform Brahms'

three sonatas for violin and piano at Middlebury College. ’ Date
12/10/2004! Age group competition in road, mountain,
and trail running has seen some recent success for me: a
first place in the New England USATF Mountain Running
Series and a second at Mt. Washington this past summer;
plus a gold in 2011 and a gold and a bronze in 2010. My lat¬
est was a gold in Syracuse, September 30, 2012. Running
Times magazine awarded me an honorable mention in the
age group for 2011, which was very cool—to be in print with
our age group phenoms—compared to whom I’m much
slower. Each year I strap on my iron man Timex stopwatch
and head to the track in an attempt to increase my foot
speed for the fall road events. And, each year, I read the in¬
evitable regressive lap times and fret. Yet, in spite of alpine
ski racing to age 35 and running year-round since age 68,

I am very thankful for original knee joints—my ‘Menisci
Advantage.’ Lucky for me.”

— Class Correspondents: Mary Roemmele Crowley
(artandmarycrowley@comcast.net), 7 Hill Pond Rd., Rutland,
VT09701; Sonny Wilder (wilder931@gmail.com), 211 Hillcrest
Rd., Needham, MA 02492.

Joel Boland survived his 75th birthday with a
Derby Day party that featured the best mint
juleps. He cooked for 75 friends featuring
soused shrimp, guacamole, roast tenderloin, and “to-die-
for” flourless chocolate cake. But after mint juleps, who
cared? With wife Kati, he took a 46th anniversary road trip
to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: lots to see but miles
between stops. • In May Dave and Barbara Freeman
Irving enjoyed a two-week bicycle trip with Vermont
Bicycle Tours in northern Italy, spending time in the
Cinque Terre villages, and on Lakes Garda and Como. In
July they watched their 50-year-old daughter, who was nev¬
er athletic before age 44, complete her first full Ironman
in Lake Placid, 140.6 total miles of swimming, biking,
and running in just less than 17 hours. They found it to
be another beautiful area, and quite close to Middlebury.
• Dave Collin reports that with four joint replacements
and compression of the spinal discs, he may have to revert
to umpiring softball rather than playing. • Carol Sippel
Monsees writes, “Husband Tull has Parkinson’s disease
and up until last fall was still playing a respectable game
of golf—and we had a great winter in Naples, Fla. Things
have changed quickly, however. I just sold our home of 48
years, the only home our kids have known. Tull’s condition
requires that he be in care 24/7, and so we are moving to
an apartment in a beautiful hotel-style life care facility in
nearby Evanston, Ill. This is the best thing I can figure out
for us. I will keep the Florida condo in hopes some get¬
away weeks are possible, so check in if you are in that area.
There is absolutely no tonic as good as friendship.” • Joy
and Andy Montgomery toured the Maritime Provinces
of Canada. A 3,500-mile road trip over two weeks, leaving
from their Ontario summer cottage, took them to Ottawa,
St. John, Bay of Fundy, Halifax, Sydney, Cabot Trail, and

Winter 201 j 67

RONALD LAWSON 56

© This Bavarian hat, acquired
near Tirol in 1967, displays
mementos from my mountain
climbing, alpine skiing, and
music and beer festivals.

I was preparing for the
Catholic priesthood near
where I became Catholic in
1960 while in the U.S. Army.

© My great-great-grand¬
father George Washington
Foster was an original settler
of Calais, Vermont. This is one
of his journals. Through Foster,

I descend from a clergy person
of note on the Mayflower,

Elder William Brewster. I carry
the bloodlines of two other
Mayflower passengers: John
Billington and Henry Samson.
Bragging rights are limited on
Billington since he was hanged
for murder in 1631 in the
Plymouth Colony!

Next, I was a counterespionage
officer in West Berlin at the
peak of the Cold War.

O This rosary was obtained
surreptitiously through an
elderly nun at the Cathedral
of Budapest in the 1980s dur¬
ing the harsh Communist times
there. I recite the Rosary every
day for those who suffer for
their faith.

The larger photo shows me
celebrating Mass at St. Mary’s.

O This chalice was used at
the Trapp Family Lodge chapel
in Stowe, Vermont, for about
30 years, and was given to me
by the Baroness Maria von
Trapp, who was my mentor
and inspiration while in the
seminary.

68 Middlebury magazine

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TODD BALFOUR

ClassActs

Charlottetown. They comment that the Maritimes are
gorgeous. • A reminder, if any classmates will be in Florida
in January, Anne Martin Hartmann and Andy will be
hosting another mini-reunion, January date and location
still to be determined. If interested in attending, con¬
tact Andy or Anne. • Russ Miller— where have you been,
Russ?—and wife Doty celebrated their joint 50th wedding
anniversary and 75th birthdays with a 35-day round-trip
cruise from Boston (Voyage of the Vikings) with stops in
Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Norway,
the Netherlands, Ireland, Faroe Islands, and Maine. They
had sightings of whales, seals, icebergs, and beer mugs and
some spectacular scenery. They report that the worst part
of the trip was air flights between Florida and Boston. • As
reported in the fall issue, Pam Payne Lewis was on campus
in June to give a workshop on leadership, based on classes
in presentation skills she teaches at Carnegie Mellon. She
writes, “Meeting with Middlebury faculty and staff was ex¬
hilarating! In August I met again with Jon Isham (director
of Middlebur/s new Center for Social Entrepreneurship),
Yonna McShane (director of Learning Resources), and
Mike Kiernan (a Middlebury physician who also teaches
persuasive speaking at the College). Other highs for the
summer included a visit with Nancy McKnight Smith in
her beautiful home on the Chesapeake, and a Waybury Inn
dinner with Anne McKenzie Jourlait ’60 and her husband,
Daniel. And, of course, two trips to Maine to spend time
with our granddaughters. Our sons, Peter and Kevin, are
both active in health care. Peter, a clinical psychologist,
has just accepted a position as the suicide prevention co¬
ordinator for the Dorn VA Hospital in Columbia, S.C. As
its CEO, Kevin is helping to launch Maine Community
Health Options, a truly nonprofit cooperative health in¬
surance venture, which will start to enroll members the
fall of 2013. Since we love working with students, Gordon
and I continue to teach. But we’re happy with our deci¬
sion to retire from our house and move into apartment
living at Longwood!” • Bob Luce and wife Bea attended
the Nantucket Film Festival, which featured a film called
Beast of the Southern Wild. They returned to Oshkosh, Wis.,
for the AirVenture, the largest general aviation fly-in in the
world. On the way home, they stopped at Bea’s hometown,
Harrisburg, Ill. There they could see the damage caused by
a 175-mile tornado that had hit last February 29. • Earle and
Betty Layer Hoyt planned to celebrate their 53rd wedding
anniversary last June 9 in Yellowstone National Park.

— Class Correspondents: Lucy Paine Kezar (lucypainekezar@
myfairpoint.net), 134 Main St., Kingston, NH 03848; Andy
Montgomery (joyandym@aol.com), 8910 Hilloway Rd., Eden
Prairie, MN 33347.

Susan and Sherb Merrill have been on the
oceans. Last year they took a 28-day Pacific
cruise to Hawaii and South Pacific Islands,
ending in Sydney, Australia. Sherb felt younger because
his birthday vanished from the ship’s calendar when they

crossed the International Date Line. This past spring they
cruised across the Atlantic; Portugal, Barcelona, Rome,
and on to Athens. Sherb noted that the Greeks, in a typi¬
cally European way, did not seem concerned about their
financial plight. • Bernic Brodsky is the author of Death
in Diyarbakir. Available from online booksellers, the novel
deals with Turkish-Kurdish tensions. Bernie drew on his
extensive travels in Turkey and his experience as Far East
counsel for a Fortune 50 Company. • Jane Bryant Quinn
is doing weekly Q&As for Dimespring.com, a new per¬
sonal finance website. One quote from a recent posting:
“Personal finance isn’t about arithmetic; it’s about com¬
mon sense. Do what feels right for your family and the
numbers will follow.”* Injune Angie Larossa Randallvis-
ited with Anne McKenzie Jourlait in Aix-en-Provence.
Anne then spent five weeks at the French Language School
at Middlebury. She and Josie Vogel Wolk had lunch in
Middlebury before Anne returned home to Aix. • Summer
activities for Dick “Tusker” Atkinson have switched
from being at the helm of his Starboat to being at the helm
of the race committee’s speedy Zodiac, used as a mark
boat and crash boat for race management duties. Dick is
also chair of the Protest Committee. He noted, “While
the enjoyment and action of race competition is definitely
missed, the pounding taken by the body is not. Ironically,
however, the Zodiac delivers a good pounding at times.”

• Helen Smith Fohvciler Chipman, Nancy Mumford
Mulvev, and Rose Mary McDonough Natelson met at
the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass. The museum
of contemporary New England Art has a large sculpture
park. • Lee Vancini was a walking scorer for the 2012 PGA
Championship on the famous Ocean Course at Kiawah
Island Golf Resort. For three rounds (54 holes) he de¬
scribed and recorded the individual shots for three players.
The highlight? Scoring for a young Korean pro, who shot
the lowest round of the entire tournament, a 7 below par
65. Lee walked the equivalent of five miles in each round,
sometimes in 25-mph winds, some in rain, and with temps
near 90 degrees. The final highlight was having his grand¬
son joining him as a standard bearer for two of the three
rounds. • In January when Marian Vaughan Strong was
in the ER of the small hospital in Whitefish, Mont., the
on-call physician was named Sue Daniell. Marian told her
she went to college with a Sue Daniell, pronounced the
same way. The MD mentioned family in Vermont. Marian
put the pieces together. Her doctor was the niece of Sue
Daniell Phillips ’58. Small world.

—Class Correspondents: Jean Seeler-Gijford
(jeandave@mindspring.com), 100 Eastview Terrace, Apt.

240, Middlebury, VT03733; Vcevy Strekalovsky (vcevy@
strekalovskyarchitecture.com), 4J Fearing Rd., Hingham, MA
02043.

Bets} I lawlcy Greenmail reports, “Last April
I had the immense pleasure of going for two
weeks to Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, with my

son who is a voice, speech, dialect professor at Meadows
School of the Arts, SMU, Dallas. He went to teach and
explore student-exchange possibilities with L’Institut del
Teatre de Barcelona. Our apartment was in the Eixample
District, which provided easy walking to La Pedrera,
the famous home designed by Gaudf, and, of course, to
the amazing La Sagrada Famflia. Barcelona’s mixture of
ancient and modern, the ease of metro and trains to the
countryside, and the amazing food only heightened the
time together. We spent Easter at Montserrat, rode funic¬
ular railways, and hiked down a trail where we could see the
Pyrenees in the distance. We trained to Figueres to marvel
and giggle in the Salvador Dali museum, and trained to the
ancient town of Altafulla, where we walked on the sand of
the Mediterranean and enjoyed friends. And of course, we
‘rambled’ on the Ramblas.” Betsy continues as a vocation
coach and faculty team member for conferences sponsored
by the Episcopal Church Pension Group. This year her
conferences have been in Louisiana and in Prescott, Ariz.
Betsy reported that she was not excited about the alliga¬
tor sausage in Louisiana, but loved the prickly pear cactus
leaves and jelly in Arizona. • Roger Christian returned to
Cange, Haiti, where he had spent a week last year prior
to our reunion. Cange is the small town in the highland
plateau where Paul Farmer started the first hospital for
Partners in Health (PIH) some 25 years ago. Roger reports,
“Whereas in 2011 1 participated in only two operations and
saw several patients in the clinic, this trip was much more
productive. I assisted two Haitian surgeons operating on
a much larger number of women with breast cancer. But
the more important focus was to outline the parameters
for the medical and surgical care of women presenting at
varying stages of this terrible disease. These were estab¬
lished by a group of colleagues and me from the Brigham
and Women’s Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer
Institute, in conjunction with PIH. But perhaps the best
part of this trip was to visit the state-of-the-art teaching
hospital soon to be opened in Mirebalais, about an hour
from Port-au-Prince. It is my hope to spend a longer period
of time there this next year teaching medical students and
surgical residents. Having known Paul Farmer since he was
a medical student, and having witnessed the commitment
and work of so many people in the organization, let me as¬
sure everyone that donated funds are being used in a most
responsible fashion for some of the world’s most neediest
people.” Roger is still working four-plus days a week an$l
still loving what he does. • Pepi Connal reports he and
wife Ruth (BU ’61) keep chugging along. They spend six
weeks on the east end of Grand Cayman most winters
and were looking forward to it again this winter. Scuba
diving, sometimes with teenage grandchildren, is one of
their favorite activities. This past summer they cruised
Narragansett Bay, ending up for a week at Block Island.
Pepi reports, “We crossed over to the Dark Side a few years
back and are now in aTolleycraft 44. We get there faster, al¬
though with the cost of fuel, a wee bit more expensively.” •

Winter 2013 69

ClassActs

Lois Ryman Lewis had a good summer traveling to places
she had wanted to visit. She and her California daughter
Kathy flew to Orlando to meet up with the Virginia
daughter Jenny and Jenny’s four children. They visited
the Wizarding World of Harry Potter complete with
Hogwarts, drinking “butter beer,” and seeing Diagon Alley.
Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center were also
on the itinerary. Lois found the Space Center amazing to
see with the technology and inspiration for generations to
come. The trip ended in Haymarket, Va., with more family
time. Lois was also able to visit with Donna MacPherson
and husband Tom while in Virginia. Not content to stay
home, Lois and Kathy spent 12 days on a Viking River
Cruise in China. They toured Beijing, seeing Tiananmen
Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace, rode
in a rickshaw, climbed the Great Wall, visited Xian and the
Terra Cotta Warriors, cruised along the Yangtze River,
stopping at Wuhan, and ended up in Shanghai, where they
walked along the Bund. Lois said this trip was a wonderful
experience with an informative tour guide. They enjoyed
not having to worry about luggage, checking into their
hotels, or getting boarding passes from the time they ar¬
rived in Beijing until they departed from Shanghai. Lois
writes that she found China to be a fascinating country. “I
was amazed at the number of people and the number of
high-rise buildings in the cities. It seems as though China
is going through a transition period—young people are
leaving the country for the cities. China does a wonderful
job of preserving their culture and relics from the past.”

• Traveling closer to home, Linny Faxon and wife Diane
joined John Moser and wife Joanie and Rick and Carol
Zuck Cahoon on Cape Cod for the 75th birthday celebra¬
tion of Pieter Schiller ’60 in August. • We received word
of the death on August 1 of classmate Forrest McCarthy.
We extend our condolences to wife Bonnie and family. An
obituary will appear in a future issue.

—Class Correspondent: Janet Reed (jsreed2800@me.com), 929
W. Foster Ave., Apt. 2620, Chicago, IL 60640.

Here are some notes from those unable to
attend reunion. Sarah Howland Braddock
said they went to husband Bob’s 50th last
year at Middlebury and it was wonderful to be back and to
see people. “Sadly, this year I was having spine surgery so
we had to miss reunion.” • Anne Bossi Kiefer said, “We
have been living on Cape Cod since leaving Yale gradu¬
ate school—doing some theater, some retail—and have
raised three daughters. I’m now managing a nonprofit
consignment thrift shop in Orleans, enjoying the beaches,
the shellfish, and a laid-back lifestyle and serving on the
board of the Cape Cod Opera. We present live opera an¬
nually here on the Cape. That’s 50 years in a nutshell.” •
After 38 years of living in Boston’s South End and seeing
it evolve from a transitional neighborhood to a vibrant
place, Judith Clarke Grohe and husband Stephen moved
to Newburyport, Mass., in 2005 and closed the B&B they

had operated from 1990-2005. Judith is now involved in
her church and politics in that little city where individu¬
als can make a difference so much more easily than in
Boston. They would welcome Middlebury visitors to their
historic coastal city. • From Brazil Bill Ballou wrote, “I
have lived here for the past 12 years and really enjoy what
Rio de Janeiro has to offer. I still maintain a beach house
in Weekapaug, R.I., which my children and grandchildren
benefit from in the summer months. Last summer I hosted
a Middlebury student, who was doing an internship at the
American Consulate. Very interesting for me. His dad
works for the Voice of America in Moscow and he has a
twin brother also at Middlebury.” • Diane Alpern Parente
sent a life update: “I received a master’s in political sci¬
ence, was married in 1963, had nine children (1965-81),
and lived in Arlington, Va., while at Georgetown, where I
was a University Fellow and research assistant to Eleanor
Lansing Dulles. We lived in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and
Scranton, Pa., while my husband taught at various colleges.
I was divorced in 1986 .1 moved to San Diego in 2003 (adult
children and grandchildren there), then moved to North
Port, Fla., in 2012. I’m living with my youngest daughter’s
family (with my youngest grandson). Aside from raising
nine wonderful children (who have given me 12 equally fan¬
tastic grandchildren), I was very active in the Pennsylvania
pro-life movement, edited their state newspaper, worked
for the Diocese of Scranton, wrote four church histories
and numerous freelance articles, organized and ran an
outreach to the elderly program in my Scranton parish,
and participated in several other ministries. It all looks so
simple written down in black and white but it’s been (and
still is) a great life!” • We got some news briefs from John
and Judy Weihe Furlow: John recently retired as dean
emeritus of Ohio University’s Lancaster Campus and Judy
retired from teaching high school English. “We kicked
off retirement by taking a trip to Russia to celebrate our
50th wedding anniversary. I’m sure we would have had fun
reminiscing at reunion. We got engaged at the Waybury
Inn, which would have been a great place to stay, but our
grandson’s graduation from Willamette College in Oregon
plus some festivities surrounding our retirements kept us
from being able to attend.” • Sandy Schwartz was at re¬
union but had this to add: “After I left Middlebury I went
to Columbia to get an MA in history and deferred my ad¬
mission to do international law at the Univ. of Virginia. I
lived in New York with Vic Micati, Nick Calise, and
John Hose and liked grad school so much that I stayed
for a PhD in Latin American history. My research took me
mostly to Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, and I took a position
at the Univ. of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and stayed
there for almost 30 years as professor and chair, spend¬
ing lots of time in Latin America (Mrs. Centeno would be
proud) and publishing mostly on Brazil where I taught at
various times. In 1992 I remarried, and when a good invi¬
tation came from Yale in 1996, I was ready to come back
to New England (and Maria, my wife who is from Puerto

Rico was ready to get out of the Minnesota winters). We
have both been at Yale for about 15 years where I direct the
Latin American Studies Council, run a graduate program,
and where I did a five-year stint as master of one of the Yale
residential colleges. We spend a lot of our time traveling,
writing, and I spend as much time with my tennis that my
knees will allow. My two kids both work in New York in
the fashion industry and there are two grandkids so we are
often in the city. Retirement? Maybe some time soon.”

— Class Correspondents: Judy Bosworth Roesset (jbozroesset@
aol.com), 8809 Mariscal Canyon Dr., Austin, TX78759; Liza
Dunphy Fischer (bfisch@msu.edu), 611 Oakland Ave., Iowa
City, I A 52240;John Sinclair, 482 Woodbury Rd, Springfield,
VT 05156.

REUNION CLASS More than two dozen
classmates gathered at Bread Loaf for the
Alumni Leadership Conference (ALC) in
late September to finalize details for our 50th reunion,
June 6-9. Please make sure you read upcoming newslet¬
ters from our co-chairs and answer the phone if one of our
workers calls. Most requests are not for money. Often we
are seeking ideas and background information. HELP! If
you can. Susan Washburn Buckley and Jane Bachelder
Johnson kept the Yearbook Committee working long
hours until the Monday afternoon after ALC. • Susan
Buckley reports that her NYC life has changed a bit. She
has relinquished her gavel as president of NYC Central
Park Paws, the organization (6,000 members) she found¬
ed 13 years ago, which has made it possible for dogs during
the day to run leash free in the park. • Jim McKeown,
our outreach chairman, is in the throes of promoting in¬
formal mini-reunions across the country. The most recent
occurred November 4 at the home of Chuck and Joanne
Fay Gibson in Concord, Mass., orchestrated by Meg
Holmes Robbins, Lvn Wilkins Green, and John Angier.
Attendees were Chuck and Sue Handy Burdick, Bill
Delahunt, Charlie Buell and wife Sybil, Linda Patton
Mengers and husband John, Dave Arnold and wife Andra
Crawford, Dick Schlesinger, Barbara Schwer Wenzel
and husband Dick, Susannah Chalmers Deacon, Doug
Crandall, and Dick Floyd and wife Kathy. A thank you
goes to all for making the effort. Reports are that it was a
really fun time. Let’s help Jim keep the momentum flow¬
ing. • Other news from near and far: Cathy Iikkn 1 low ell
has taken up residence at Wake Robin in Shelburne, Vt.,
and word has it that she is the youngest lady there. Also,
her daughter was married nearby on November 12, so
she has the title of mother-in-law. • Sandy Zuccarelli
Gasbarro, we are told, will be unable to join us for reunion
due to her wedding anniversary and the 18th birthday of a
grandson. • Arnie Levinson assures us that he will be in at¬
tendance. • Mark Aldrich has retired from Smith College
as an economics professor, but relates that he is often
called back to duty to teach one course each semester. •
Dave I leacock and wife Corky still ski at Gore Mountain,

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sometimes with one or more of their io grandchildren!
They report that they maintain contact with Kathy and
Steve Wilkerson. • Neil Savage relates that he has been a
Girl Scout volunteer for 26 years, focusing on environmen¬
tal care of New England’s shore lands. Super storm Sandy
must have been quite an example to deal with. • Dave and
Mary Leslie Hanscom continue to take daily hikes in the
mountains surrounding Salt Lake City. They report that
John Bower and wife Bonnie have moved from Maine to
Moab, Utah, where John is very much involved in assisting
the U.S. ski team prepare for the 2014 Winter Olympics. •
Living in Canada, Dave Margoshes has come out with a
new book entitled A Book of Great Worth. A collection of
linked stories, he tells of his father’s life as a reporter and
columnist on a daily Yiddish newspaper covering the labor
beat during the 1920s and ’30s on NYC’s Lower East Side.
The book was picked to be on Amazon.ca’s Best Books of
the Year So Far list. ‘June 6-9 is creeping up on us. Stay
in tune! Check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.
com/middleburycollege, ably managed by Liam English
(a lot of great photos there!). Also assist Jim McKeown
(jim@fewerworries.biz) with informal gatherings. As al¬
ways, suggestions are welcome: Betty Ann Cooper Kane
(bettyannkane@sprintmail.com), Meg Holmes Robbins
(mthrob@comcast.net), Chuck Burdick (cburdick@
shoreham.net), Sabin Streeter (ss1179@columbia.edu) or
us at the addresses below.

—Class Correspondents: Janet Brevoort Allen-Spencer
(janallenspencer@gmail.com), 2 Arizona PI, Huntington
Station, NT 11746; Christopher J. White (cmbrycst@aol.com),
347 Duck Cove Rd., Bucksport, ME 04416.

Correspondent Pam Nottage Mueller
reports: As I write this column I have just re¬
turned home from a spectacular Middlebury
trip to Alaska, visiting both Denali National Park (we were
lucky to see Mt. McKinley most days!) and Southeast
Alaska’s Inside Passage. There were 15 or so folks from
Midd, representing classes from 1961-1972. In addition,
Prof. David West (geology dept.) joined us to share his ex¬
pertise on this very “rocky” part of the world. The group
was great, the sights and activities even better. Because
New Hampshire has such a short summer we rarely leave
Lake Winnipesaukee, but this trip was well worth it. • As
she appreciates the present, Claire Waterhouse Gargalli
reflects on the past. “After 26 years in the commercial
banking business in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, I was
in the executive search business for eight years, retiring
in 1998. Since then I have been on several large corporate
boards, currently Baker Hughes in Houston and Praxair
in Danbury, Conn. That, along with some not-for-profit
boards, keeps me pretty busy. In 2001 my husband, David
Carley, and I moved to Charlottesville, Va. This is a lovely
town with many interesting people and of course the Univ.
of Virginia. Sadly in 2009 David died, but friends and
family have been wonderful and I enjoy my garden and

my precious dog, Jackson. I have a small summer cottage
on the family property in Maine, and Jackson and I walk
in the woods, see family, and escape the Virginia heat.” •
Kit Telfair Wright sent this update: “After 20 years in
South Jersey by the beach, which followed about 25 years
in Vermont, I and husband Charlie Wood retired, sold
the house, and moved to Austin, Texas, in October 2011!
For those who have not done it in a while, downsizing
and moving long distance is not for the faint of heart. But
we made it, with help from many corners. Sadly, Charlie
died in early March after many years of poor health. So I
am starting over in Texas, near family (daughter Cindy
and 9-year-old granddaughter in Austin and my brother
in Houston) and warmer weather in the winter. New doc¬
tors, highways, stores, libraries, volunteer jobs, license
plates, and hobbies take up some time, and I am now able
to be Nana Kit for Naomi, a job I love. Austin is noted for
its music scene, as well as its slightly offbeat approach to
life, and with the help of the younger folks, I am trying to
fit in. Mackie, a sweet Sheltie dog, and I are living in an
apartment with a yard, much easier than a four-bedroom,
two-story house on a corner with lots of leaf-losing trees
and sidewalks to shovel! My other daughter Beth, her
n-year-old son, and her husband live in Vermont, so I will
be making my way back there periodically. Hope to see ev¬
eryone at our 50th reunion in 2014. Meanwhile, if anyone is
visiting Austin, please stop to say howdy.” • Correspondent
Bob Baskin reports: Jim Doane may have grown up in the
Washington, D.C., area, graduated from Middlebury as an
economics major, then completed his PhD at Tufts, but
he’s spent the majority of his career in California. You may
be wondering how this East Coaster made it all the way
across country. Turns out he was teaching energy econom¬
ics at the University of Maine, when someone decided to
impose an oil embargo on the U.S. in 1973. Remember the
gas lines? Turns out the Jet Propulsion Lab, the only NASA
center run by a university (Caltech), realized that much of
the work they were doing on alternative energy might be
more commercially viable if they better understood what
role economics played with consumers. And Caltech/JPL
were wise enough to believe that economists could provide
some of those needed insights. In 1974, JPL brought in Jim
and several other economists and other social scientists.
Jim retired from JPL in 2008. When asked how he made
the leap from straight economics to alternative energy
and even to some time working on the Space Station, Jim
credits not only the economics discipline of his doctoral
program but also the liberal arts education he acquired at
Middlebury that broadened his perspective and honed his
critical analytic skills. Jim lives in California with his wife
of five years and has two very accomplished children from
a previous marriage. Daughter Rebecca is a cardiologist in
Oakland, and his younger son a lawyer in NYC. His older
son, Randall, was lost in an accident 20 years ago. In re¬
tirement, Jim enjoys time spent with family and friends,
photography, reading, cycling, golf, and a little bit of skiing.

He recalled a nice experience related to our 25th reunion.
Driving to Middlebury for that gathering, Jim happened
to meet Ian Sanderson at the Snow Bowl. They had not
seen each other in 25 years and had not really kept in touch
after freshman year. But they conversed easily about what
they’d been doing since Middlebury and about life lessons
from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Since both were living in the
D.C. area at the time, they saw each other a few times over
the following year. Having caught up with the previous
decades, conversation switched to the present and future,
and was just as satisfying. The experience showed Jim how
much we ’64s have in common. No matter from where we
came to Middlebury, or where our lives took us after, we all
chose the same college, had many of the same classes and
professors, and have now lived through the same (nearly)
five succeeding decades. Now if that heady thought in¬
spired Jim at the 25th, think about what’s going to happen
at our 50th!

— Class Correspondents: Marian Demas Baade (mcbaade@
aol.com), 4 Red Rock Rd, New City, NT 10956; Bob Baskin
(robertbaskin@msn.com), 6925 Woodside Place, Chevy Chase,
MD 20815; Pam Nottage Mueller (pammuellerj@gmail.com),

J4 Stonybrook Ln., Contoocook, NH 05229.

Mindy Wright Colquitt writes, “Wayne
and I are both fine as we turn 70 and real¬
ize how fortunate we are. We have just one
grandchild, age 2. Carol Dickcrman has just retired
and moved back to Ann Arbor after four years working
in Chicago.” • Francis Love has made many trips back
to Vietnam and to Nhon Due in particular. In a recent
e-mail he wrote, “In 1998 I returned to Vietnam for the
first time since the war as a member of a team of veterans
riding bicycles from Hanoi to Saigon. Since then, I have
been able to return approximately every two years to pres¬
ent scholarships to promising students and at one point to
donate some computers to the new school in Nhon Due.”
In April 2012 he returned, this time to work with veterans
on building homes in the Delta with Habitat for Humanity.
After that he planned to return to Nhon Due to present
another round of scholarships and, hopefully, provide ad¬
ditional computers for the school. • We all can take pride in
our classmate Randy Brock, who lost a hard-fought bid to
unseat Vermont’s incumbent governor this past fall. Randy
received over 100,000 votes, nearly 38 percent of the total
number cast. Remember the benches in front of the Dog
Team Restaurant? One was over 20-feet long and labeled
Republicans ; the other, a love seat labeled Democrats. Those
benches no longer exist but if they did, the labels would
have to be reversed. In fact, Vermont’s electoral votes were
the very first to be declared in the Obama column.

—Class Correspondents: R. W. “T” Tall Jr. (ahmic@shoreham.
net), 204 Clark Rd., Cornwall, VT05753; Polly Moore Walters
(polly@frii.com), 100 Grandview Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521.

Winter 2013 71

ClassActs

Having just taken part in his 50th high school
reunion, Steven Perry took a few minutes to
catch us up on what he’s been doing since re¬
tirement. “After about 15 years as an itinerant biomedical
researcher and university teacher in the area of the zoology
and human/comparative anatomy in Germany, England,
and Canada, I managed to land a professorship at the
University of Bonn, Germany, in 1994. During that time, I
was active in the area of respiratory biology with frequent
trips to Brazil, where I collaborated with groups in the state
of Sao Paulo. After organizing two international meetings
in the area of respiratory biology, our group is now form¬
ing an international society for respiratory science, which
focuses on everything having to do with respiration: from
climatology and the origin of oxygen in the Earth’s atmo¬
sphere to botanical, zoological, and medical applications.”
Since retirement in 2009, Steve has been focusing more on
music, art, and literature. While in Brazil he learned to play
the Brazilian 10-stringed guitar and is now co-organizer of
a folk music club in Bonn, where he sometimes performs.
He also sings in choral groups, including a seniors sing¬
ing/acting group that performs at the municipal theater.
Steve’s looking forward to our 50th reunion in 2016! • Liza
Dunbar Koven still has most of the same interests she
had at Middlebury. Among her new interests: “Absolute
best thing is eight grandchildren, many on the West Coast
so lots of travel.” Liza continues, “Sad about classmates
deaths, but we’re all gettin’ on! The 70s do loom—college
50th(!) in four years still seems a long way off.” • “Not sure
where I left off so I’ll go back a ways,” writes Joyce Smith
Mills. In a career change, Joyce enjoyed being a certified
financial planner until her retirement in January 2010.
Having sold her vacation house on Cape Cod in 2008, she
took some wonderful trips from the proceeds—Australia,
Spain, Turkey, and Uganda and Kenya in particular. Both
of her daughters are now married, with the oldest working
as an infectious disease physician/researcher in Kenya and
the youngest living in southern New Hampshire and work¬
ing in the investment field in Boston. Joyce writes that
they “both had unusual weddings, my youngest getting
married at a plantation in Kentucky without any of the
traditional trappings and my oldest marrying in Uganda
in both a Western ceremony and a traditional Ugandan
Kwanjula ceremony where we all dressed in traditional at¬
tire. The groom’s family was introduced to us and brought
us many presents. A good time was had by all at both
ceremonies!” Joyce keeps busy with courses in the Osher
program at Tufts, chamber music concerts, working with
a personal trainer, making jewelry, and doing things with
friends. She sees Shirley Frobes frequently in spite of
their living on opposite coasts. “Shirley and husband Steve
came to Uganda in 2011 for my daughter’s wedding there,
and we have met in Seattle and New Hampshire since that
time. My youngest daughter is named for her, and both of
them are married to Steves, which makes for complicated
conversations! • Judith I qgjk HishikawB was featured

on a blog called “Just Genesis” recently in a conversation
about the Nile-Japan Ainu connection. She was familiar
with the Ainu of Japan but not with their Nilotic ances¬
tors and sought information from the blog. She is a former
volunteer for missions with the Episcopal Church in Japan.
• Please visit and join our Class of 1966 group page available
from www.facebook.com/middleburycollege. Prue has
written some directions: 1) You need to have an account
with Facebook. Go to facebook.com and create an account
plus password; 2) Once you have an account and are logged
into Facebook, use the top “search” window in Facebook
to find our group. Type Middlebury College Class of
1966—that will take you to the correct group page; 3) You
need to JOIN the group. This means you need to submit a
request. Look for Join Group on the right under the pho¬
tos and click on it. Francine Clark Page will get a request
to add you to the group; 4) Once you are in the group, you
can upload photos, post messages, etc. There are a lot of
great photos there already to see!

— Class Correspondents: Prue Frey Heikkinen (pheikkinen@att.
net), 1914 Wayne Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104; Francine Clark
Page (fpage2@myfairp0int.net), 19 Brigham HillLn., Essex
Junction, VT 09492.

Correspondent Susie Davis Patterson re¬
ports: Alumni College this year might have
been the best educational experience of
my life. I took Robert Frost and His Mountains—great
subject matter and locale to be sure. But it was the truly
gifted and extraordinary talents of our Middlebury pro¬
fessor emeritus, John Elder, who ran a seminar for 46 of
us (many of whom brought the richness of personal en¬
counters with Frost to our discussions) and encouraged
and supported and validated our ideas and responses
to our close readings of Frost, while broadening our vi¬
sion with references to Eliot, Wordsworth, Milton, and
Shakespeare and, not least, his personal stories, that made
this a peak life experience. I was happy I had persuaded
one classmate at reunion— Marion Bouitbee— to join me
this August. Then I was delightfully surprised on day one
to hear an Alumni College participant introduce himself
as Ed Hann of the Class of ’67. Ed and I did not know
each other at Middlebury, although we discovered that
we shared a major. Ed was gracious enough to say that he
thought he had heard of me; I was smart enough not to ask
what he had heard. After Middlebury, Ed went to divinity
school in Washington, D.C., and then spent his career as
a Methodist minister in New Jersey. Daughter Jennifer,
who graduated from Middlebury in ’95, had brought her
dad to Alumni College because, he claimed, “she feared
my brain would turn to mush after I retired.” Not to
worry: Ed was a great contributor to our group and was
the subject of much lobbying by me to come to our next
reunion. Of course, each Alumni College class group sang
the praises of their professors at each communal meal in
the Bread Loaf Inn. Five courses are offered the last week¬

end of each August. Marion joins me in saying you really
owe it to yourself to come join us next year. You’ll be rais¬
ing your glass to us in thanks at the 5:30 cocktail hour on
the lawn each afternoon. • Another fantastic Women of
’67 (Wof67) gathering was held September 8-10 in Hope
and South Bristol, Maine. Our weekend was special in lo¬
cale for sure (our first in Maine), but also, as always, in the
spirit and community created by the coming together of
21 wonderful women of our class, with our richness of life
experiences and the continuing friendship bonds between
us. Barb McEvoy Bentley did an amazing job of organiz¬
ing and hosting us at her heart-of-Maine deep woods home
with swimming lake, sauna, hiking trails, aerie tree house,
and tenting meadow. The weekend started out with a high
point of all our gatherings. Jana Mara Holt arrived at the
Camden dock for our sunset Schooner Olad sail with our
first-ever Midd man interloper, Jon Coffin! Jon and Jana
are such a great example of why classmates should come
back to every reunion. Thanks to the two of them for re¬
minding us of the breadth and depth of our Middlebury
class pool, and that maybe there are Midd “firsts” still to
come in some of our lives. We wish them fun and happiness
together. And then on Sunday we got to go to Bob and Dee
Martin Montgomery’s pristine, coast of Maine, gorgeous
new home to share a delicious, traditional lobster and clam
bake. Our beach cook, Skip, was delightful and his down-
east accent gave us an over-the-top Maine experience. We
celebrated five first-timers to Wof67: Ramsev Ludlow,
Roxanne McCormick Leighton, Faith Cohoon
Leonard, Barb Bentlev, and Dee Montgomery. Others
in attendance were Margot Childs ( heel, Kathie Towle
Hcssion, Jana Holt, Joanne Hall Johnston, Carol
Collin Little, Jervis Lockwood Anderson, Sue Rugg
Parmenter, Karen Unsworth, Marion Bouitbee, Judy
Pierpont, Patty Ramsey, Cathy Clement, Gert Jones
Como, Freddie Mahlmann, Lee Powers Smith, and me
(Susie). The history of this group is remarkable: 46 wom¬
en from our class have attended one or more gatherings
since we started in 1991. There are 119 women currently
in our class so that means well over a third of us have
participated. We hope to include many more, and next
fall Sue Parmenter will host us at her family property,
Rugg Haven, in East Cornith, Vt. E-mail Sue (loghome@
tops-tele.com) to be put on the e-mail group list.

— Class Correspondents: Susan Davis Patterson (sdp@alumni.
middlebury.edu), 6j Robinson Pkwy., Burlington, VT09401;

Alex Taylor (atayloru49@gmail.com), 219 Wells Hill Rd,
Lakeville, CT 06039.

REUNION CLASS New correspondent
Betty Austin Flenderson reports: Barbara
Ensminger Stoebenau, after many years of
dedicated service as one of our class correspondents, has
finally twisted my arm and convinced me to take her place.

I have become aware of how little news I have sent over the
years to keep in touch with all of you and to assist Barbara

72 Middlebury magazine

and Ben in their responsibilities. So I will start off by an up¬
date on what I have been up to and hope that many of you
will follow suit. At this point in my life, I find it especially
gratifying to reconnect with longtime friends and to see
how we have all changed and how we have remained who
we were in college. I have just finished a two-year term as
president of our local AAU W branch. This reawakened my
desire to make a difference in the world of women’s issues,
but it was a big job and I’m ready for a rest. To celebrate,
this past summer we did a lot of traveling and it’s nice to
have the time to do that. Husband Don and I just returned
from a Middlebury Alumni Association trip to Alaska,
cruising the Inside Passage on a small ship—only 36 pas¬
sengers. There were lots of opportunities for hiking and
kayaking and viewing the wildlife and glaciers. In addition,
we had professors from Middlebury (Dave West, geology)
and from Duke to help us understand what we were see¬
ing. Meanwhile, back in the Texas heat, I enjoy gardening,
bird-watching (especially the hummingbirds), reading (two
book clubs), my dream interpretation group, and our local
‘Real Food’ dinner group (gourmet potluck dinners featur¬
ing produce from our own gardens and the local co-op).
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at reunion next
spring. • Your other class correspondent, Ben Gregg, has
now retired from EPA. One of the real reasons was that
his grandchildren (Alden at three years, three months and
Caroline at one year, five months) were coming east with
their parents from Kansas for a six-week visit, and Ben did
not want to get up in the morning and go to work, leaving
them behind all day! Plus, as with other classmates, 66 is
“old enough to retire!” • Speaking of which, Ben just got
word from his junior year roommate, Conrad Ambrette,
that he also is retiring, closing down his 60-year-old law
firm, so the process will take some few months but has
been initiated. Speaking of which, Kathy Mason Lindsay
and Conrad are proud to initiate their married life to¬
gether, after many years of dating! Conrad writes, “Kathy
and I were married (finally!) on August 25. Kathy was my
Carnival date freshman year and we reconnected 30 years
later. We had a strong Middlebury contingent at our wed¬
ding at my family’s home in Grafton, Vt.: Kathy’s twin
sister, Linda Mason; their younger sister, Julie Mason
Lacey ’77; my two sons, Brian ’02 and Eric ’04; Tobi Gray
Watson; and David ’69 and Magna Leffler Dodge. I will
hopefully close down my law practice soon and then move
up to Middlebury (where Kathy has lived for the past 30
years). This year will be busy, with each of us selling our
respective houses and then buying our house. Makes me
tired just thinking about it.” We all send them best wishes
for this next phase of their life. Are there any other reports
of retirements and/or exciting reports of nuptials? • Don’t
forget that reunion weekend isjune 7-9. Let’s try to recon¬
nect before then on our Middlebury Facebook page. You
need to join Facebook first then go to www.facebook.com/
middleburycollege, click on Class Groups, and find 1968!
— Class Correspondents: Ben Gregg (bcgregg46@aol.com),

418 East St. NE, Vienna, VA 22180; Betty Austin Henderson
(JoyHumBird@aol.com), 5717 Club View Ct., Kerrville, TX
78028.

Anne Llarris Onion remains immersed in
her school year job as high school guidance
counselor, as well as grandmother of darling
twin two-year-olds, gardener, political worrier, woods wan¬
derer with golden retriever, and reader for the 36th year
of her book group. “As sad news of loss of our classmates
comes more often, I am grateful for each day! However,
I’m feeling very remiss in the news-gathering department.
If anyone out there would be able to devote more time to
class correspondent, please speak up! And do write Peter
or myself with your news in this watershed year as most
of us go on Medicare. Are you still working? What are you
doing with retirement? What have you learned in this past
year? Join the Class of 1969 Facebook page, especially in
anticipation of our 45th reunion in 2014!”

— Class Correspondents: Anne Harris Onion (aonion27@gmail.
com), PO Box 207, Gilmanton, NH 03237; Peter Reynolds
(preyn@wcvt.com), 493 Stillmeadow Ln., Addison, VT 03491.

Diantha Bartlett Howard writes, “Our son
got married last June—two family weddings
in one year! We feel very fortunate that both
kids are living in Burlington, Vt., so we are able to see them
often. We enjoyed seeing Rick ’72 and Lindy Frew Brownell
’72 when we were in Maine last summer.” • Debby Gaines
Monroe writes, “I went to the 10th reunion of the Class of
’02 with daughter Jessica ’02 and son-in-law Will Vaughan
’01 so I could be the nanny for my new grandson, Rob.
Even though I missed our last reunion, this was still the
taste of Middlebury that I needed, not to mention get¬
ting to spend time with Rob. I really liked getting to see
Self-Reliance, Midd’s Solar Decathlon entry in 2011, and
meeting some of the people involved in it. I wish them
all the best in the competition next year. Otherwise, I’m
still working at the Financial Accounting Standards Board
with no real plans for retirement.” • Judy Lelchook sent
this update: “I’m still in a public health administration and
clinical position with the D.C. Health Department. For
the first time I am working with addictions; this is new for
me, since I left the PhD policy program at Maryland. I’m
the mental health lead with the Red Cross of Alexandria,
but I have not traveled with them since I went on disas¬
ter duty last spring in Tennessee and Louisiana.” • Writing
from the Atlanta area, Lynda Basehore Cioci says that
she set the end of this past year for her second attempt at
retirement—the last one was 10 years ago! “I hope to do
better this time as I leave my compliance work in the secu¬
rities industry behind, and Ray and I plan some major trips
with Antarctica at the top of the list.”

— Class Correspondents: Beth Prasse Seeley (beth@seeley.com);
Nancy Crawford (ncrawford_sutcliffe@comcast.net).

SPARK an internship that lights up
a student's career path.

During his internship with the Vermont j
Agency of Natural Resources, Morgan !
Boyles '13 (ES/geography and history)
created interactive river maps to help
Vermont towns avoid future flood |
damage. "It was fascinating
and challenging," he says.

Internships spark jobs
for students. Paid internships
are key for financial aid students
who need to work during breaks.

Your Annual Fund gift—of any size—

' .i; : ■ I'

adds up to experiences
like Morgan's.

Spark something with your gift *
today at go.middlebury.edu/give.

Thank you!

Middlebury

Dede Stockdell Welch and husband Carl have
just retired to Santa Fe, N.M., and to the dream
house they have built over the past year. Dede
leaves a career of 40 years in the financial industry. She
writes, “Santa Fe is lovely. Our view is 270 degrees, the sun
sets off our portal, and we look at the lights of Los Alamos
at night. I can’t wait to be settled in, because I know it’s
going to be wonderful. New Mexico is truly the Land of
Enchantment. We are looking forward to a lot of company,
once we are settled in.” • Churchill Franklin writes, “In
June we had the Class of ’72 (Janet Halstead Franklin’s
40th), the Class of’02 (Chip Franklin’s 10th), and the Class

Winter 2013 73

CELEBRATIONS

O Geordie Romer 95 married Allyson Zacharko on September 4 , 2011. at Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth.
Wash. Friends who joined them included Ben Kimball 94 , Jesse Cunningham ’94. the newlyweds. Emma Ansara ’96 with
Ben. and Steve Engle ’95 with Cyrus. Q Katie Behrens. MA Spanish ’09 and Garrett McMahon were married on June 18 .
2011. in Kildeer. III. Spanish School friends joined them: Sarah O’Neil, MA Spanish ’ 09 , the newlyweds, and Gina Mezzano
Douvris. MA Spanish 06 . ©Stephen Messinger 02 and Lauren Saraiva were married on a gorgeous September 2011 day
in Kingfield, Maine, with Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance, surrounded by family and friends and kegs of delicious local
Maine beer. The wedding included many Midd alums, who enjoyed dancing the night away, scotch and cigars, and late night
s’mores by the fire: (all 02 unless noted) Ben Herter ’ 03 . Mason Smith. Annie Nichols Jones. Morgan Jones. Dana Gordon
Dombrowski. Andrew Dombrowski. Eric Devon, Ed Bogart, the newlyweds (in front), Derek Chicarilli, Ben Weber, Chip
Franklin. Hannah Ritchie Franklin, Chris Fanning, Sarah Knoebel. Nick Dutton-Swain, Lori Nelson Bresnahan 86. Churchill
Franklin 71 , and Janet Halstead Franklin 72 .

O H January 2012 a Middlebury mini-reunion took place in Shanghai. China: (seated) Ian Doherty 00. Joe Yu ’ 13 , Urvashi
Barooah 13 , Amanda Granger ’10. J. Gregory Arthur 09 . Adil Husain '01. (standing) Dan Ruth ’ 09 , Zach Woods 09 . and
Bobby Gosney 09 . Q Last January Isabelle Paine Thacker 88 visited Mary Beth Pryor Gonzalez 88 at her home in NYC
for a long weekend.

of ’07 (Lindsey Franklin’s 5th) all for brunch in our back¬
yard in Cornwall for their respective reunions. Perfect
day and very exciting to see all the age groups mingling.”
Churchill adds a reminiscence: “Do you recall how we all
used to head out to the Whiting quarry (a place that no
one seems to know exists anymore) to jump off the 50-foot
cliffs into the crystal clear quarry water? It was the late ’60s
and early ’70s, so of course some (most?) of us were naked.
It would be hard to forget the local Vermonters on the
other side of the quarry next to their pickup trucks with
binoculars watching the college kids be college kids. The
big event was driving Jack Bouffard’s Volkswagen con¬
vertible off of the cliff and splashing it into its final resting
place at the bottom of a very deep, water-filled granite
quarry. I presume there are some other cars down there as
well!” • Jay Goyette writes, “I had a nice, long talk with
freshman year roomie Jim Keyes (now Middleburv VP
for College Advancement) the other day. Since I have no
money, it had nothing to do with fundraising—just catch¬
up. Still the great, genuine guy he always was. And I went
on a great golf weekend with Sandy Farrier, Bruce Foust,
Jim Lombardo, VG Gooding, and Chris Burdge. We
were privileged to be invited to join Sandy at his family
place at Biddeford Pool, Maine. Lots of yuks and snoring.
And conversation about—guess what? Retirement—when
and how? And what else? Long-term-care insurance! It’s
what we used to joke about back in the day. I made every¬
body laugh by saying my strategy was to be a burden on my
children. Howie Verman and Sandy McDowell couldn’t
make it this year but were missed. Emily (Groom) and I
celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary (4/8/72; do we
have the record?). McDowell got Emily her current job
(yay connections), and she loves it. Had dinner recently
with Pete Quinn and Marian Greenberg. Some things,
like true friendship, you can always count on.”

— Class Correspondents: Barbara Laudenslager Mosley
(barbaramosley@metrocast.net); Carolyn Ungberg Olivier
(colivier@sover.net); Rob Waters (robwatersjo 12@mindspring.
com).

We have a little more news gathered at
/ I reunion time. An update came from my
/ (Jennifer) Midwest neighbor Ken Downs to

report on where he’s been—and where he’s headed: “Kathv
and I have been in Toledo, Ohio, for the past 12 years,
my longest tenure in one place since I left for college.
After nearly 20 years teaching history and social studies
in places such as Belgium, Pakistan, and the Philippines,
I have spent the past 20 or so in journalism as a reporter,
columnist, editor, and page designer. I’ve been at the Blade
in Toledo since 2000, first as a copy editor and for the past
five years as associate editorial page editor. Kathy spent
five of our Toledo years in Georgia, mostly teaching the¬
ater and directing productions at Middle Georgia College.
By the time this edition of the Middlebury Magazine comes
out, however, our overseas adventures will have picked up

74 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

after a two-decade hiatus: Kathy has accepted a position
teaching and directing at the American Univ. of Kuwait.
We will have moved—lock, stock, and mother-in-law—in
September. I don’t know what I’ll be doing yet. I’ll find
out shortly whether the Blade wants to have a Middle East
correspondent. If not, there is tutoring, freelance writing,
working for an English-language Kuwaiti publication, or
even starting my own website to combine my interests in
journalism, history, and teaching. We’ll see. Sorry we didn’t
make it to Middlebury in June. We were looking forward
to renewing old acquaintances. I can always be reached at
kfdowns@yahoo.com.” • Tom McGrath let the magazine
office know that Doug Arnot had been appointed the di¬
rector of games operations for the London Olympics. He
has served as the managing director of venues and opera¬
tions for the Atlanta 1996 Games, consulted on the 2000
Games in Sydney, and was managing director for event op¬
erations for the Salt Lake City Games. Since 2006 he has
been senior VP of the Chicago 2016 bid team. *The Class
of 1972 picked up a couple of awards at reunion. We won
the Parton Family Award for a reunion class other than the
25th or 50th with the greatest increase in participation at
56 percent. We also got the Gordon C. Perine ’49 Award
for a reunion class other than the 25th or 50th with the
greatest increase in total class gift with $1,706,267. Thanks
to everyone who helped! • Nancy Shields Kollmann
reports that she has completed her third historical mono¬
graph— Crime and Punishment in Early Modem Russia was
published in October by Cambridge University Press. It
took her more than 10 years, but she says that the sources
were so great—murder and treason cases in 17th-century
Russia—that the project was fun. A history professor at
Stanford Univ., she and husband Jack have also embarked
on an adventure—they moved into a dorm to be Resident
Fellows to 160 students in all four classes (including fresh¬
men!). As empty nesters (Sasha, 25, and Chris, 22, are both
up and out, living locally), this seemed like a fun new chal¬
lenge. The Kollmanns keep up what is now a 20+-year
tradition of sharing summer vacations with Ron and Linda
Callahan Henry and family—in 2012 they were in Hawaii.
• You may have seen the Moroccan cookbook and memoir
written by Lisa Craig in the “In the Queue” section of the
fall magazine. She writes, “It describes the life and recipes
of my maternal grandmother who brought her family here
from North Africa in 1939 and proceeded to make a name
for herself as a renowned hostess and chef of Moroccan
cuisine. She came to the attention of Craig Claiborne, food
critic of the New York Times , who described her feasts as
‘home cooking that a sultan would envy.’” Lisa is the direc¬
tor of the Glen Cove (N. Y.) Adult Day Program at the Glen
Cove Senior Center.

—Class Correspondents: Jennifer Hamlin Church (jhchurch@
sienaheights.edu); Evey Zmudsky La Mont
(eveylamont@primetimetransition. com).

REUNION CLASS We regret to report the
September 6 death of Edwina Shivelhood-
Kartez of Freeport, Maine. Edwina majored
in art at Middlebury and trained in Waldorf early child¬
hood education at Sunbridge Institute. She was a
graphic artist, calligrapher, beekeeper, permaculturist,
and Waldorf teacher. An obituary will appear in a future
issue. • Walter Newman shared an announcement of his
forthcoming retirement as director of paper conserva¬
tion at the Northeast Document Conservation Center.
During his long career, he conserved hundreds of works of
art and artifacts, supervised projects, performed surveys,
did training and consulting, and published trade articles.
His projects took him across the country and abroad, in¬
cluding to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National
Archives in Mongolia, and the Center for Conservation
in Chile. Over the years he has been involved in training
and consultation in Cuba, including at the Hemingway
Museum in Finca Vigia. Along the way he earned a master’s
in Spanish at Middlebury’s summer Spanish School. We
wish him a successful retirement in West Fairlee, Vt.

—Class Correspondents: Deborah Schneider Greenhut
(deborah.greenhut@gmail.com); Andrea Thorne
(andreathome 8 @yahoo. com).

Peter Harris sent a great update from Derby,
Vt., along the Canadian border, where his fam¬
ily moved 24 years ago. “My wife of 35 years,
Louise, has had a great career teaching elementary school
and will be retiring this spring. I have been practicing pri¬
mary care pediatrics and internal medicine in Newport.
The biggest blessing of our lives has been two grandsons,
who arrived in June 2011. Having raised only daughters,
this has been an exciting ride. Mandy, our middle daughter,
who works as an occupational therapist at Fletcher Allen in
Burlington, was the first. With husband Ryan she brought
forth Calvin, a mop-headed, mellow child who does it all
well except sleep. Megan ’00, our oldest, with husband
Jason, had Hale, a headstrong blondie who likes nothing
better than kicking a ball. Meg went to UVM Medical
School and now practices primary care internal medicine
in our practice in Newport. Our youngest, Abbie, lives
with her boyfriend Chris in Ketchum, Idaho, where she
grows vegetables in the summer and coaches and teaches
Nordic skiing in the winter. My visits out there for all the
recreation are high points of my year. Now that our house
is remodeled and settled, I fill my extra time with brew¬
ing beer, x-c skiing, hiking, and mountain biking. Best to
all!” • After Lauren Singer Waite told Greg Dennis at our
25th reunion (in 1999!) that she and husband Peter were
planning to move back to Vermont, and then seeing Greg
make the move just a few years later, she is thrilled to have
finally moved to Bristol with Peter after living in Seattle
and upstate New York for the past 34 years. She is enjoying
reconnecting with many Midd friends and works for the
College’s Admissions Office as a seasonal reader. She’s still

riding and competing with equine partner, Phoebe. Her
latest fun news is that daughter Hillary ’05 and husband
Brendan ’05 are new parents. Son Chris ’08 is in Boston
and daughter Hannah ’11 is in NYC. • Brad and Bobbie
Burchenal Landers have also moved to the Middlebury
area recently. They moved to Cornwall in September after
over 30 years in Connecticut, and they love being back in
the Middlebury community. Bobbie reports, “Our kids are
fairly scattered—the three boys are in Seattle, Washington,
D.C., and New York City, and our daughter, Kathryn, is
in her last year at Miami of Ohio, so we are delighted to
make this our home base. Both of us retired from IBM two
years ago; Brad continues to work with his own software
development firm, and I have been an EMT for the last
several years. I was very sorry to give that up in the move,
but it may translate fine to the Middlebury Volunteer
Ambulance group one of these days. But more important¬
ly, we have bought passes at the Snow Bowl and are looking
forward to skiing!”

— Class Correspondents: Greg Dennis (gregdennisvt@yahoo.
com); Barry Schultz King (kinglet@together.net).

From Arlington, Mass., Gordon Jamieson
is excited to report that Translational
Therapeutics expects to begin the clinical eval¬
uation of their lead cancer therapeutic agent in 2013. At its
core, TransRx is in many ways a Middlebury ’75 enterprise,
as 10 of our classmates (including, among others, Caroline
Sneath McBride, Bob Bourque, Rory Riggs, Tim and
Carol Blakely Counihan, and Kevin Donahue) have
seen fit to invest in Gordon’s enterprise, which is focused
on developing cancer therapeutic systems applicable to
25 percent of human cancers. We’re all hoping Gordon
hits it big and makes an equally big impact on cancer. If
you’d like to learn more about it, you can contact him at
gordon@transrx-inc.com. • In other news Caroline
McBride was recently made a Midd trustee, Bob
Bourque was recently named the chair of AFEC (Annual
Fund Executive Committee), and Rory Riggs continues
to work and support the activities of MIDDCORE (entre¬
preneurship class) during winter term. • Marty Van Oot
recently joined law firmjackson Lewis in their Portsmouth,
N.H., office as a partner. She had been at Orr and Reno
in Concord, N.H. She’s looking forward to moving to the
seacoast—more salt water in which to paddle and fewer
hills on the bike! • Curt Viebranz writes, “After nearly 20
years at Time Warner and a decade in the Internet start-up
world, I moved to the nonprofit sector in September 2012
when I was named CEO of George Washington’s Mount
Vernon. Mount Vernon is the most visited historic site in
America; we welcome more than a million people each
year. In addition to the estate and gardens, we also have an
education center and a museum and in September 2013, we
will open the Fred Smith National Library for the Study of
George Washington on a site contiguous to the estate. The
opening of this 45,000-square-foot facility will mean that

Winter 2013 75

Tom Stillman grew up in
Minnesota so it’s no surprise
that he laced up skates early and
became an ice hockey player.
At Middlebury he played on the
varsity men’s team, developing
his skills under the tutelage
of Coach Wendell "Wendy"
Forbes ’51. His path after col¬
lege wasn’t focused on hockey-
law school, law firm, federal
government, beer distribution
business—but he didn’t stop
playing and he didn’t stop
loving the sport. Moving to
St. Louis, he became an ardent
St. Louis Blues fan. So one
might say a dream came true
in May when he led a group to
buy the Blues—only as he says,
“I never would have dreamed
this.” He credits the College
with a big assist: “Wendy and
Middlebury gave me the
opportunity to continue playing
hockey. That kept me involved
in the game and fed the fever,
which continued long after
college and, one could argue,
led to the Blues transaction.”

He and his partners are
determined to keep the fran¬
chise stable and competitive.

Meanwhile, he continues
to skate himself, sometimes
even with his old teammates
from Middlebury. (See top
photo; Tom's on the left.) He
laces up to play with them in
the over-50 division at the U.S.
Pond Hockey Championships
in—where else?—Minnesota.

76 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

214 years after his death, George Washington will finally
have a national library. Mount Vernon was saved from ruin
in the mid-i8oos and is overseen by the Mount Vernon
Ladies’ Assoc., the oldest historic preservation organiza¬
tion in America. I now report to a board of 28 women! We
have never accepted any public funds, relying instead on
private support. If any of you are in the D.C. area, we are
14 miles from the Capitol. Let me know if you are in the
neighborhood.”

— Class Correspondents: Kevin Donahue (donahuek@vibram.
us); Nan Rochelle McNicholas (hbmidd@yahoo.com); Joanne
Scott (jscott@smcvt.edu).

Gary Gray sent in this update: “In the small
world department, my daughters and I hiked
one mile of the Long Trail last summer on
our day trip to take in the view from the top of Camel’s
Hump. The view was great, but the real treat was running
into classmate John Hearst on the way up. John had al¬
ready covered 100 miles of the trail and he looked virtually
unchanged—either by the hiking or the 36 years since we
graduated. When he’s not out and about, John practices
medicine in Bennington, Vt. I’m a government attorney in
Washington. They say a walk in the woods is good for the
health, but who knew it’s a great way to meet old friends?”
• In other 1976 news, the Johns Hopkins Univ. recently an¬
nounced that Jacqueline Lee Mok has been appointed
VP, chief of staff, and secretary to the board of trustees.
Previously she was the provost and senior VP for academic
affairs, as well as senior VP and chief of staff, at the Univ.
of Arizona. • The New Jersey Bankers Assoc, recently an¬
nounced its 2012-2013 officers and Kevin Cummings is
serving as the chairman. He is the president and CEO of
Investors Savings Bank in Short Hills, N.J.

— Class Correspondents: Gene O'Neill ( 0US3024 @optonline.
net); Betsy Sherman Walker (bsw1915@aol.com).

Laurie McLeod took a new road in her
creative career and published a book, Make
It Happen in Ten Minutes a Day. The Simple,
Revolutionary Method for Getting Things Done. Inspired
by the time constraints she encountered as a single
mother, Laurie developed this blueprint for productiv¬
ity and wrote the book in, yes, 10 minutes a day Already
a bestselling eBook in England and France, the book is
gaining national recognition at home. Learn more at www.
makeithappenintenminutesaday.com.

—Class Correspondent: Bob Lindberg (rcl@linrip.com).

REUNION CLASS Jeff Plank sent word
that he has a new job. “In April I became
the owner of Mid-Cape Home Centers, a
117-year-old building materials company serving Cape Cod,
Martha’s Vineyard, and the Southeastern Massachusetts
community. The business was established in 1895 by the
Nickerson family with current locations in Wellfleet,

Orleans, South Dennis, Hyannis, Yarmouth, Martha’s
Vineyard, Plymouth, and Middleboro. We run 25 delivery
trucks all over the place. If you are on the Cape, I am typi¬
cally in the South Dennis store, so stop in!” • Bob Haney
is a litigation partner at Covington & Burling in New York
and was married July 23 to Evangeline Gomez, an attorney
and member of the board of trustees at Rutgers Univ. •
Jennifer Brown writes that she made a career swan dive
last January after 27 years at Fidelity Investments and is
now chief engagement officer at Partners In Health. “So
much for slowing down” with daughter Codi (15) hitting
her mid-teens! As of August, Jennifer had already been
to PIH sites in Haiti, Rwanda, and Malawi, and by the
time this issue goes to press, she will also have traveled
to Lesotho. There is, she writes, “nothing like being a
middle-aged white lady showing up on a mountain road in
Butaro or Neno to provoke gales of laughter —muzunguC'
• Court Chilton is working as a professor at MIT’s Sloan
School and doing a lot of executive education with clients
all over the world. He writes, “Couldn’t interest either
of my daughters in Midd—they get why I love it, but
they wanted ‘warm’ and are both in college in California.
Luckily my wife, who works for the Ephs down Rt. 7, and
I like going there, too.” • Emory Williams writes, “Last
June I sold the China mining machinery company I ran to
a U.S. heavy equipment company and then spent most of
the summer on family travels in northern Italy (where we
followed the amazing Chicago Children’s Choir in which
our son John sings), London, the Scottish Lowlands, and
the U.S. I’m still involved in a couple other China/Asia
businesses and have joined the board of Northwestern
University, where I attended grad school.” Emory’s sons
John (15) and Bo (4) and daughter Joy (1) “are all well and a
great blessing to my wife Lucy and me.” • After 30 years in
New England, Dick Eaton (along with three kids, 17, 14,
and 11) moved to Portland, Ore., last year, and he writes, “I
love the Northwest. My work continues to be stimulating
and fulfilling, particularly as a coach to highly successful
business people. Outside of work I play ultimate Frisbee,
practice Reiki, and paint landscapes in oil, which is my
greatest passion. Court Chilton and Roy Heffernan
are two classmates I see regularly. Hope all is well with
everyone.” • Bern Terry is involved in a new venture: “I
am joining VGo Communications, which makes remote
interactive tele-presence robots. These allow people to
beam themselves across town or to a distant location from
their computer at home or office and then look, hear, and
interact as if they were there. Exciting uses in healthcare,
education and research.” • Kim Wiehl writes, “After over
20 years living in London, working for JPMorgan Chase
and the Berne Union, I have recently moved back to the
U.S. I’m now living in Westport, Conn., and working with
the family commercial real estate company. I enjoyed my
years in Europe, especially traveling to many countries in
Central and Eastern Europe as well as China, Japan, and
Thailand in Asia. However, I was lucky to come back

and forth to New England during those years and have
kept in touch with many of my good friends from Midd.
Being back has been a lot of fun—catching up, now in per¬
son—and we enjoyed a festive beach picnic in July hosted
by Mike ’77 and Karen Divalentino McGown at Sprite
Island. The Midd gang of ’78 included Jane Leggett,
Diane Nastri, and Phyl Wendell Mackey and husband
Mike. Plans for ski trips and other adventures are under¬
way and we are all looking forward to our 35th in June. My
address is 193 Regents Park, Westport, CT 06880; e-mail
kimwiehl@yahoo.com.” • Be sure to check out our class
Facebook page and tell us your news! We already have 71
members who are posting photos and updates. Also, please
mark your calendars for our 35th reunion, which is June
7-9. We have always had an outstanding number of class¬
mates return and look forward to another great time.

— Class Correspondents: DavidJaffray (djaffray@mchsi.com);
Phyllis Wendell Mackey (phylmackey@hotmail.com); Anne
Rowell Noble (annenoblemail@aol.com).

Hamish Blackman and Bill Ryan, both of
whom discovered the bagpipes after gradua¬
tion, traveled together to Switzerland last July
to perform at the Basel Military Tattoo. Their pipe band,
the Stuart Highlanders Pipes and Drums, was the only
North American pipe band attending. They performed 16
shows in 10 days—in front of an audience of approximate¬
ly 8,400 at each show. You can find them on YouTube, if
you search for Basel Military Tattoo 2012! • Majie Zeller
writes, “I went back up to Midd in the fall for a Mischords
and D8 reunion that took place Homecoming Weekend
in October. It was a blast. We were there to celebrate the
50th anniversary of the founding of the Mischords and, lo
and behold, our merry band from the late ’70s and early
’80s was the, um, most senior generation there. Marge
Coombs Wellman ’76, Dorrie Fuchs, Jane Hosie-Bounar
’81, Henriette Lazaridis Power ’82, Nina Koules Anton ’82,
Margaret Miller ’82, and I stayed true to our era by singing
the Grateful Dead, then joined the whole group spanning
35 years of Mischords for three more songs in the Mead
Chapel concert, with Jennifur Fields Condon ’80 and our
D8 buddies Wouter Rietsema ’80, Scott Fleming ’80, Steve
Ahmann ’80, Paul Turco ’80, and Ken Shulman ’80 in the
audience. (Yeah, they sang, too.) The next day we met up
with Nancy Smith Brennan ’80 for a chairlift ride at the
Snow Bowl, where we also saw Nina Lian. Then we head¬
ed down to Boston to see Joanellen Sullivan, Hamish
Blackman, Kim Ulrich Whelan, and Randy ’80 and
Mary MacKenzie Corke at the home ofjim ’81 and Cindy
Yasinski Tenner ’81. What a great weekend!” • We (Mary
and Nancy) are still looking for two classmates to take
over as class correspondents. Please let us know if you’re
interested or contact the alumni editor, Sara Marshall, at
smarshal@middlebury.edu.

—Class Correspondents: Mary MacKenzie Corke (mary.corke@
gmail.com); Nancy Limbacher Meyer (Umes79@yahoo.com).

Winter 20/3 77

Middlebury College Alumni Association

2013 NOMINATIONS

Alumni Trustee

Dennis D. Parker 77

The full slate of nominees for the term of office
beginning July 1 , 2013 . will be available for viewing
on March 1 . 2013 . and voting on April 1 . 2013 .

The deadline for voting is April 30 . 2013 .

Please vote at http://go.middlebury.edu/mcaa.

To appear in the online spring ballot, additional
nominations must be received by March 1, 2013 .
These nominations must include a signed letter
of acceptance, updated biographical information,
a photo, and 200 alumni signatures endorsing your
nomination.

For a paper ballot, more information, or to submit
nominees, please contact the Alumni Office, Painter
House, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753
or e-mail us at alumni@middlebury.edu.

SAVE THE DATE

Reunion 2013 will be June 7 - 9 !

Stephen Croncota, who is the executive VP
and CMO of GSN (formerly Game Show
Network), sent word that they are launch¬
ing a new series from Lionsgate and Eli Frankel called
Family Trade. The series is based on the Stone family in
Middlebury, who run G. Stone Motors, a GMC and Ford
dealership. For years founder Gardner Stone has taken
anything in trade towards a new car or truck, a practice
his son and daughter sometimes have trouble with. Called
a modern-day barter system, the dealership’s original ap¬
proach to business and the family drama it can provoke
will be spread out over eight episodes.

— Class Correspondents: Anne Cowherd Kallaher
(annie.cowherd@att.net); Susanne Rohardt Strater (scstrater@
videotron.ca).

Several classmates gathered in October to wit¬
ness the return to Middlebury of His Holiness,
the 14th Dalai Lama. Elaine King Nickerson,
Sally Rueger Barnes, Kathy Leary McCarthy, Stacey
Pogust Danziger, Sue Taylor, and Marcia Nordgren
traveled from Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia to
join Carolyn Bausch (now living in Vermont) and Marcy
Parlow Pomerance for a weekend of inspiration and re¬
flection. The Dalai Lama’s pragmatic and compassionate
messages regarding the “oneness of humanity” nourished
body, mind, and soul. And, in the spirit of embracing life’s
simple joys, these Midd women proceeded to have a fun-
filled and restorative weekend. As Carolyn remarked,
“We put ourselves in the Dalai Lama’s hands, and we were

rewarded.” And as more than one person somewhere
has said, “Laughter is the best medicine.” • In addition
to the news of Mike Price and his firm being profiled in
the New England Real Estate Journal (which he insists was
not a big deal), Mike reports that he bumped into John
and Vicki Lamphere ’84 Burchard, Steve Clancy, and Roy
Heffernan ’78 at the “Life is Good” concert in October.
He also regularly sees John Hayes. His firm, Legacy Real
Estate Ventures, had a solid year and his family is great. •
Helen Ladds Marlette was recently promoted to assis¬
tant head of school and director of external relations at
the Buffalo Seminary, an independent school for girls in
Buffalo, N.Y. • Carolyn Bausch and Marcy Pomerance
have agreed to sign on as correspondents with Elaine. You
can send them news at the e-mails below!

— Class Correspondents: Carolyn Bausch (cbausch@verizon.
net); Elaine King Nickerson (eknick@aol.com); Marcy Parlow
Pomerance (pomerance@comcast.net).

Last May, Jane Simon Fritz and Wendy
Behringer Nelson had a mini-1982-reunion
at the NCAA Division III tennis tournament
in Cary, N.C. Jane’s son, Joey, won a great singles match
for Amherst, where he is now a junior. • Kate Kennedy
reports, “My daughter, Jamie, graduated from college with
a degree in international studies. My husband, Dave, is re¬
tired and I am looking forward to joining him, but it will
be 8-10 years. He and I are totally addicted to river rafting
and spent a good part of the summer in Idaho rafting.” •
Tim Cook is keeping busy most of the time by operating
his urgent care clinic in Rutland, Vt., and thanks every¬
one for paying their federal tax dollars so that the Army
Reserve Medical Corps can keep him gainfully employed
the rest of the time. • Chris Price writes, “I am married
to Meg (Marion) ’83. We live in Darien, Conn., and have
three daughters, Caroline (19), Jenny (17), and Eliza (12).
Caroline is a sophomore at Bucknell and Jenny and Eliza
attend St. Luke’s School. I’m a partner in the law firm of
Goodwin Procter in the New York office. When I have
downtime, I like to spend it cycling, skiing, running, and
spending time with the family. Meg is a senior EMT in our
town and a lacrosse coach in town and at the girls’ school.”

• Alison McGhee writes, “My daughters and I visited
Greece, a place they’ve wanted to visit ever since they were
little and read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I have a few
books coming out over the next few years; currently I’m
working on poetry and another adult novel. More than
anything, though. I’m just so grateful these days for all the
love and happiness that comes my way from friends and
family.” • Jeff Clarke, Rick Present, and Mike Sloss had
a mini-reunion in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the com¬
pletion ofjeff’s tenure as the interim president and CEO
of the Council of Foundations. Rick continues to work
for the National Board of Examiners in Optometry and
Mike helps put together financing for affordable housing
in his role as managing director of capital for ROC USA.

• Charlie Robinson is doing well at Huber Engineered
Woods, where he serves as GM on the ZIP System brand.
ZIP is a new technology that allows builders to eliminate
house wrap and felt. He donated Zip System product to
the Midd Solar Decathlon team. Daughter Hannah is a
member of Middlebur/s Class of 2016. Her Hough High
School soccer team won the North Carolina 4A State
Championship and was ranked #1 in the nation by ESPN
last spring. She played soccer at Midd in the fall. Wife Liz
(O’Connell) ’85 is working at Davidson College in the hu¬
man resource dept. • Emma “Raleigh” Mayer, an NYC
executive coach and consultant known as the Gravitas
Guru, took a detour back to her stage days at Middlebury
by performing a few numbers at the 92nd Street Y Cabaret
program, including Adele’s “Someone Like You” and Don
McLean’s “American Pie.” Anyone up for a Midd talent
show, Class of’82? • Kevin ’81 and Danielle Lamm Granath
write, “Our oldest is a sophomore at Harvard and we love
to explore a new city. E-mail us (danielle515@gmail.com)
your favorite Boston restaurants, bars, or things to do. Our
13-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter visit there with us
once a year or so, too. Sorry to miss the reunion last year.”

• This news came from Susan Meier Burke: “I was really
hoping this was going to be the time that I made reunion!
However, last spring and summer were even busier than
usual. My oldest daughter, Maddie, got married in Maine.
My middle girl, Katy, graduated from Wake Forest. And my
youngest, Jeff, started at Boston College this fall and will
play baseball for them this spring! Oh, and after 17 years
in Chattanooga, I sold my home and moved to NYC. I do
hope to catch up with some old friends so if anyone is com¬
ing through NYC or lives here, I hope they’ll get in touch
(susanburkechatt@gmail.com). I’m enjoying being back
in the Northeast and only hope I can survive the winter.”
•Judy Bonzi reports, “I’ve been in Maine since January
at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, where I’m
a Fellow, and I’m loving every minute of it. Recently the
Farnsworth Museum in Rockland had a bench design
competition, and one of my submissions was chosen
among the 15 out of 75 submissions that are being exhib¬
ited at the Messier Gallery in Rockport this Januarv. I’ll
be at CFC until early summer and then—who knows? My
daughter started grad school to get her master’s in teach¬
ing, and my son is literally a rock star and a luthier; so the
nest is empty, and I’m having a blast!” • Hannah Felton
Lyons writes, “I had a wonderful time at our 30th reunion
with all of the rest of our classmates. There was great rep¬
resentation from Hepburn 5, which was really fun. Our
oldest has a job after graduating from Dickinson and our
youngest, Molly, is a freshman at Dartmouth and rows for
their women’s crew team. I continue to work in oncology
at Massachusetts General Hospital and John continues
teaching and coaching at Groton School. We had dinner
last spring with Jeff Johnson and Beau Coash and their
spouses. All are doing well.” • Wendy Behringer Nelson
had three Class of 1982 mini-reunions in one week while

78 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

up north dropping son Colin at Union College to start
his freshman year and at Midd delivering son Alec for his
senior year. She traveled to Chelsea, Vt., to compare class
correspondent notes with Caleb Rick and wife Trish.
Wendy, Caleb, and Trish worked together 22 years ago in
San Francisco—and none of them have aged a bit! Later
in the week, she ran into fellow empty-nesters Laura Ten
Broeke Rumbough and husband Doug at the Middlebury
Co-op and ended her Midd stay by attending an a cap-
pella concert at Mead Chapel with Henriette Lazaridis
Power. • Laura Rumbough’s daughter, Anna, graduated
from Middlebury Union High School and now attends
Denison Univ. She spent the summer biking in Tuscany on
one of Laura’s Tips on Trips and Camps programs.

— Class Correspondents: Wendy Behringer Nelson (gomomgo@
bellsonth.net); Caleb Rick (crick@northcommon.com).

REUNION CLASS Maria Padian writes,
“I’m still living in Brunswick, Maine, with
my family, although it’s rather quiet around
the house since we delivered our youngest, Madeline, to
Middlebury, where she’s a very happy member of the Class
of 2016. On move-in day we had a chance to reconnect
with some classmates, joining Mark and Moaique Lucas
Conroy and their kids, Kevin ’16 and Kristina ’14, for
lunch at Ross. While we were eating, the Conroys intro¬
duced us to Bob Norberg’s son, Chris ’16, who had already
arrived on campus for football preseason. Later that day
we ran into into Terry Epstein at the president’s recep¬
tion at the Mahaney Arts Center—she had just dropped off
her daughter, Jordan ’16, in Battell! Over the summer my
husband and I got together with Mary Borah Gorman
and husband Steve for a great weekend of biking, kayak¬
ing, and good conversation (not to mention Mary’s great
cooking) on Cape Cod in Truro, Mass. And every once in
a while Dan Kagan and I stop Facebook-messaging each
other long enough to actually leave the house and get to¬
gether. He lives one town over in Freeport. He and wife
Julie had us over for brunch one cold February morning to
introduce Madeline to their son, Max, who’s also a student
at Midd. So, now that the house is quiet and I’m an empty
nester, I have no excuse not to be very productive and get
on with my writing. I’m venturing into a new novel right
now and also doing some promotional work for my third
book, which is due out in February 2013. It’s a young adult
novel called Out of Nowhere , and it’s about the friendship
that develops between a white teenage boy from Maine
and a Somali refugee boy who play on the same high
school soccer team. • Todd Miller writes, “I’m officially
retired. I took early retirement and love it. I worked for
20 years at UVM’s College of Medicine and have lived in
Burlington for 25 years. I’m a Vermonter and grew up in
Montpelier, graduate of Montpelier High School.” • Geoff
Proctor sent word that he recently published Behind the
Stare , a book about the sport of professional cyclocross.
In 2007 he took a sabbatical from his job as a high school

English teacher in Helena, Mont., to write the story of a
sport where he’s not only been a fan but also a competi¬
tor, among other things, and he serves as a member of the
International Cycling Union Cyclocross Commission. • As
of last July 1, Roger Chow began serving as the director
of curriculum and instruction for Tacoma (Wash.) Public
Schools. Working in the district since 2010, he previously
was an instructor facilitator and oversaw the development
and delivery of all content and professional development
K—12 language arts and social studies curriculum. ‘John
Morrison is the owner of the Wachusett Dirt Dawgs, a
team in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League of New
England, where elite collegiate baseball players compete
in a minor-league format. The Dirt Dawgs play on Doyle
Field in Leominster, Mass. John writes, “The Dawgs were
a new venture this past summer—even more noteworthy,
this is the league that brought Midd junior pitcher, Mike
Joseph, to the attention of area pro scouts and resulted in
Mike signing a pro contract with the Orioles and forgoing
his senior year at Midd. It would have been fun to be party
to that conversation with his parents! I would be happy
to host any ’83s in the ‘owner’s box’ next summer. I’m not
sure if reunion will work between the team and our oldest
graduating from Carleton in June.” • We hope many of you
can get back to campus for reunion June 7-9!

— Class Correspondents: Ruth Kennedy (ruth.kennedy4@gmail.
com); Siobhan Leahy Ulrich (sulrich@westminster-school.org).

Meryl Capone checked in after flying far
too long under the Midd tech radar. She
has lived in California since 1995 and is in
Santa Barbara County in a small town called Los Olivos.
She manages a winery—let me repeat that—she manages
a winery. It’s called Gainey Vineyard and she has been
there for 17 years. Her company also recently opened a
second winery—Evan’s Ranch—and she manages this one
also. Meryl reports that she LOVES her job! She was mar¬
ried in February 2009 to “a wonderful man, who I met
through friends, and his name is Alvie Whitaker.” Alvie has
a 13-year-old daughter, so “I became an instant mother.”
Meryl couldn’t include too much more in her note because
she was setting off an amazing trip to Europe for her 50th
birthday and Alvie’s 40th birthday—Rome, Mediterranean
cruise, Barcelona, Spain. Not too shabby. • Betterinvesting
announced that John Gannon had been elected to the
NAIC-Betterlnvesting board of directors. He retired as
president of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation,
where he managed the foundation’s grant-making and
programmatic efforts to educate and protect investors. • A
landscape architect in Virginia, Charles Stick was profiled
in Garden and Gun magazine last winter. • Check out some
1984 mini-reunion photos on page 89!

—Class Correspondents: Elizabeth Eppes Winton (ewinton@
mac.com); Andrew Zehner (andrewzehner@gmail.com ).

Claire Wrenn Bobrow writes that she’s been
living in San Francisco since graduation. After
experimenting a bit in the work world, she
went back to school and got a master’s degree in land¬
scape architecture from UC Berkeley in 1993. Now she’s
raising two kids, Juliette (high school sophomore) and
Lewis (8th grade), with her husband Jared who is an IP
lawyer. They spend a lot of time at the baseball diamond
and the soccer field, as well as at choral performances,
enjoying the kids’ activities. In addition to lots of volun¬
teer work at the kids’ school, Claire’s other interests are
dance and the San Francisco Opera, where she is a volun¬
teer board member. As for Middlebury friends, she sees a
lot of Kristin Morse and would like to see more of Sara
Ramseyer Klein! Kristin and Claire have been in a book
club together for over 17 years and they love to walk their
dogs together at the beach when they can find the time.

• Lisa Meyerhoff Marks writes that in July, she took her
oldest daughter on a two-week holiday to Japan—her high
school graduation present! They spent most of their time
in Tokyo and Kyoto, visiting museums, imperial gardens,
and temples, temples, temples! Lisa explains, “The coun¬
try is immaculate, the people are respectful, the rooms are
compact and efficient (but beds are hard as marble, pillows
like sacks of flour!), and everyone takes pride in their work!
Enjoyed the food, but never found a decent breakfast. If
you go, bring lots of cash (rarely accept credit cards) and
comfortable shoes. We’ll cherish the memories always.”

• Eileen Minnefor is still living in Brooklyn, N.Y., with
husband Will Dixon and sons David (14) and Michael (12).
She reports that they moved to Brooklyn 15 years ago,
before it became the “hip” borough, and still like it there,
although she’ll admit to actively discouraging any more
Manhattanites from moving in. This year, Eileen is once
again teaching legal writing to first-year law students at
Fordham Law School and in November, she was looking
forward to seeing at least some of her Middlebury friends
at a weekend get-together. Hopefully they will have more
to report soon, since they are planning a group trip to
Italy to celebrate their 50th birthdays! • Lance Young
also filled us in on his life. He has been in and around the
Greater Boston area for the last 25 years. After doing a bit
of dancing directly out of college, Lance turned to more
“serious” work in the field of high-tech marketing, working
as a marketing director for IBM, Bow-street, and Platinum
Technologies. After 9/11, Lance went to work for his family,
the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in Connecticut as
the executive director of human potential development
for seven years. It gave him a chance to pass on what he
had learned through education and his professional career
to the youth and young adults in Native American tribes
around New England and throughout the Northeast,
through the development of educational and career pro¬
grams and services. He has since returned to Boston, living
on Bunker Hill and working once again as a marketing di¬
rector of a technology integration company where he has

Winter 2013 79

ClassActs

been for the past seven years. • Ruth Lohmann Davis and
her husband Matt have recently ventured into the world
of entrepreneurship with their start-up of Ground Energy
Support, LLC (groundenergysupport.com). Their compa¬
ny offers web-based monitoring of geothermal heating and
cooling systems. Ruth and her husband are hydrogeolo¬
gists by training but developed the new geothermal HVAC
monitoring system when they recognized the parallels
between hydrogeology and thermogeology. Ruth is lucky
enough to have twin sister Denah Lohmann Toupin help¬
ing in, the marketing effort! • Peter Simonson ’54 sent this
note: “When I recently went in for eye surgery, I discov¬
ered I was in good hands because the highly recommended
doctor turned out to be a Midd graduate also, by the name
ofjordan Sterrer.” Check out a photo on page 83.

— Class Correspondents: Ruth Lohmann Davis (ruth.davis6y@
gmail.com); Denah Lohmann Toupin (denaht@comcast.net).

Jeneva Burroughs Stone sent a detailed and
beautiful e-mail describing the undiagnosed
illness that has left her son Robert, born in
1997, profoundly disabled. He has a global movement dis¬
order that, gradually, left him with variable and extremely
limited voluntary movement—so limited that he cannot
reliably access augmentative communication technol¬
ogy, despite the fact that his receptive language abilities
are within normal range and he’s very social. Robert has
remained undiagnosed for 14 years now. “My Midd class¬
mates also rose to the occasion in December 2011 when my
husband and I were connected with a new nonprofit, Rare
Genomics Institute, which connects families of undiag¬
nosed children with genome-sequencing labs and research
neurologists. Part of our job was to raise, using crowd¬
sourcing, $7,500 to cover the reduced rates negotiated for
us by RGI for the testing. We raised almost all of it within
less than two weeks on Facebook and dozens of my class¬
mates gave. I was blown away—I tried to thank as many as
I could personally, but I want to extend my deep gratitude
and awestruck admiration to everyone. All of this remind¬
ed me how much my years at Middlebury meant to me
and how the College and my classmates continue to play
a role in my life. Thank you to all. I’ve also been working
on a memoir about Robert’s illness, and especially want
to thank Mike Strong for his help and advice in the early
stages and throughout. I’ve recently won residency fellow¬
ships at the MacDowell and Millay Colonies to work on
the book. I’ve just returned from MacDowell, where I
nearly crossed paths with Mike Paterniti— he left about
two weeks before I arrived!” Jeneva will keep us updated
on her son’s progress and on her book. Check out her blog:
http://jgirl3.blogspot.com/. • Since the column is a bit light
this winter, below is news from the class correspondents:
Becky Spahr Frazier is enrolled in a Pennsylvania Master
Naturalist program. “I hope to concentrate on stream and
wetlands restoration in the Pennsylvania southeastern
eco-region. I’m currently working on my capstone project.

My kids are impressed; at least, they call me Dr. Frazier. I
love it! I also continue to work as a facilitator for various
team-building programs. Most of the work is based around
group initiatives, as well as high- and low-ropes courses.
Still fun and very rewarding work!” • Torsten Garber is
still on the West Coast and passes along the following:
“Hi all, still living in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Watching our
three kids develop and trying to keep up with their sports
is keeping us busy. I’m still working as a contractor for the
Navy at NAS Point Mugu and, due to the nature of my
work, I can’t talk about it much. I love hearing from you all
and Becky and I encourage all of you to drop us a note and
let us know of your doings.”

— Class Correspondents: Becky Spahr Frazier (frazierbeck@
comcast.net);Torsten Garber (skytag@verizon.net).

As promised in the fall issue, here is more
classmate news gathered at reunion: Buffy
Andrews Lamberson writes, “Going back to
Midd for our 25th was a fantastic experience! It was won¬
derful to reconnect with old friends I haven’t seen in a while
and spend time with my closest friends that I never feel I
get to see enough! I think the best part of the weekend was
drinking sangria on the lawn in front of Atwater with an
ever-growing group of old and new friends, catching up on
each others’ lives, talking about our Midd experiences and
about where our lives go from here. Middlebury put on a
great reunion weekend and it was truly good to go back!” •
John Woolley manages a private equity fund at Tamarack
Capital and continues to be very involved with his com¬
munity and efforts to help women and orphans in Rwanda.
This past Christmas he was taking his children over there
to soak in the country and all that they could learn from
it. • Kristen Suokko returned from four months of living
abroad with her family in India and China as a part of her
husband’s economic research. Many insights about both
countries were gleaned, but even more about her children
who chatted with her in ways that our busy American life
sometimes doesn’t permit. • Yale Lewis practices family
law at his own firm in Seattle. He also specializes in Indian
law and has worked on legal cases with the Swinomish
Indian Tribal Community. • Georgette Csobaji is a social
worker in Baltimore. • Tim Weed lives in Putney, Vt., and
coordinates programming for National Geographic stu¬
dent expeditions. 'Joel Brother is still jet-setting around
the world in search of leather. “That’s really what I do,”
says Joel, “and my boys think that’s cool. Not to mention
the various flight attendants on my regular routes. My
lovely wife is very confident that even with my exotic and
exciting job description, the flight attendants don’t notice
me. She has every reason to be confident. I fly coach.” •
As mentioned in the summer issue, Jack Otter published
a book, Worth It...Not Worth It?, on personal finance. Buy
it and write a great review on Amazon. If the book makes
the bestseller list, Midd can hit him up for more dinero.

• Rommin Adi lives with his wife and three kids in New

Canaan, Conn., and is a partner in the strategy execution
firm BTS. • John Aymar joined BTS two years ago and
is working in business development. He lives in Fairfield,
Conn., with his two sons. BTS now has 10 Middlebury
grads who came on board in the last five years. They’re all
doinggreat! ‘John Bohan lives in Manhattan Beach, Calif.,
and is the founder and managing director of a social media
marketing company called SocialTyze. • Don Hindman
writes, “Really sorry to have missed our 25th reunion—it
looked like a blast and it was fun to see how well (most)
of our classmates have aged!” He was attending the D8
60th anniversary reunion at Homecoming in October, so
he couldn’t make two trips out from Colorado. “Speaking
of Colorado, I’m totally enjoying the myriad outdoor fun
stuff to do out here—lots of mountain trail runs this time
of year. Cheers to all.” • Sarah Albano Wascura is working
on a PhD in English at Lehigh Univ. with—hopefully!—
conferral in May.

— Class Correspondents: Tom Funk (tomfunk@gmail.com);
Elizabeth Ryan O’Brien (obrien@bigwhoop.com).

REUNION CLASS Hi classmates!
Members of the 25th Reunion Committee
met at Bread Loaf in late September to start
planning and organizing reunion—June 6-9. Attending
the leadership conference were Anya Puri Brunnick, Jim
Calise, Margie McDonald Devine, Ellie Waud Dorr,
Vicki Wright Bronson, Rebecca Martin Connard,
Michelle Dube, Michelle Millin Stroud, Joan Viebranz
Lockwood, and Andre Berot Spring. You will be hear¬
ing from members of the committee throughout the year.
We had a great weekend and can’t wait to see you all in
Vermont in June! Start rallying your friends now! • John
Goebel and wife Eve welcomed their third son, Andrew
Francis, on August 20. • Beth Zogby writes, “A new job
opportunity fell into my lap in Rochester, N.Y. The cause
is pet-related. It’s a relatively new local foundation called
Rochester Hope for Pets. Most of you know what a dog nut
and shelter/rescue advocate I am, so I agreed to begin last
July 16. I’m helping to build a more formal development
infrastructure for the organization. Here’s the website:
http://mvahopefoundation.org.” Congrats Beth! • Bridget
Jennings Dumont writes, “I’m still with the man I met
during my junior year abroad! I’m still using my languages
from Midd in my daily work as an interpreter/translator
and international advertising/marketing/PR consultant.
Best decision I ever made was to attend Middlebury!” •
John Walker writes, “Last summer I visited Middlebury
with my two daughters (ages 16 and 14). Highlights for
them included seeing the school, swimming at the Falls of
Lana, and eating at A & W. The lowlight was mandatory
camping at Lake Dunmore—I pretended to like it. While
I was in town I saw Pam Lawson Quinn at what used to
be Lyon’s Place. We had a nice chat and I have to say that
Midd looks glorious in the summer!” • In mid-September,
Claire Gwatkin Jones made the quickest visit of all time

80 Middlebury magazine

to Michael Obel-Omia’s home in Barrington, R.I., while
en route to Providence Airport from Martha’s Vineyard.
In that time, she and Michael managed to agree that they
would bring both their families to our 25th reunion in June.
Be prepared, Claire may pop by at any time to coerce you

GRADUATE SCHOOLS

BREAD LOAF SCHOOL OF ENGLISH

Louise Wagner Kempka (67- 69, ’71) sent a note about
Jean Baker (MA ’68), who passed away on June 23. A
high school teacher, Jean also loved theater. “She delight¬
ed Bread Loaf Little Theater audiences in plays spanning
from Shakespeare to Fry to Ionesco. Jean was a Larch lady,
remembered by many for shouting “everyone out of the
pool’ to summon people to cocktails at the Larch well.’ •
At Wheeler School in Providence, R.I., Marcie Cummings
(MA ’83) was selected as the 2012 Founder’s Award recipi¬
ent, the highest honor presented by the Alumni Assoc. She
has taught English at Wheeler since 1980. • In June Rick
Commons (MA ’94) will step down as the headmaster at
Groton School in Groton. Mass., which he joined in 2003,
to become the president of Harvard-Westlake School
in L.A., where in the early 1990s he worked as an English
teacher, college counselor, assistant dean, and soccer
coach. • Charles Soriano (MA ’96), who has been serving
as the East Hampton (N.Y.) School District’s assistant su¬
perintendent for the past nine years, recently took over as
the principal at East Hampton Middle School. • Bill Wiles
(MA ’96) retired from the State of Vermont. He served as
a teacher in public and independent schools and, more re¬
cently, as a probation/parole officer with the Vermont Dept,
of Corrections. Bill moved on to his new role as director of
grants and special projects at Castleton State College and
continues as an adjunct professor in the colleges English
dept. • Hugh Dyment (MA 01) was recently appointed to
the Alaska Community and Public Transportation Advisory
Board. He has been a teacher with the Lower Kuskokwim
School District for more than two decades. • Mohsin Tejani
(M A 01) is the founder and executive director of the School
of Writing in Karachi. Pakistan. The school was established
in collaboration with the Andover Bread Loaf Writing
Workshop. • Tara Lynn Tanner (MA 08) is the director of
special programs at the Sting and Honey theater company.
She also teaches at the Waterford School in Sandy, Utah,
and is mom to two children.

CHINESE SCHOOL

Ellen Welch Granter (’84, ’85) was the featured artist
of the month in November at the Edgewater Gallery in
Middlebury. Her work also appeared on the cover of the
novel The Help. • Paul DiResta (MA ’12) has accepted a
job teaching at the Belmont (Mass.) Hill School.

FRENCH SCHOOL

Christine Igot (MA ’90) is currently on leave from teaching

to come back to campus this summer! Mark your calen¬
dars—or else! • Check out some 1988 mini-reunions on
pages 74 and 83.

—Class Correspondents: Anya Puri Brunnick (abrunnick@
gmail.com); Claire Gwatkin Jones (gwatko@yahoo.com).

French at Universite Sainte-Anne to open a vintage home
decor store with her sister Jane Nicholson in the historic
town of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Check it out: www.
mrsnicholsonhome.com. • Kathleen Turner (MA ’99) was
recently named the 2013 Massachusetts Teacher of the
Year. She teaches French at Sharon High School, where
she’s been instrumental in building the French program. •
Dawn Cheikh (MA ’05), adjunct professor of French and
Arabic at Grand Rapids Community College, was named
the Excellence in Education Adjunct Faculty Award Winner
for 2012. • This past fall Teresa Akers McKenna (MA ’05)
joined the faculty of Torrington (Conn.) High School as
a French teacher. • Justin Gibson (MA 08) and Sarah
Gower (MA 09) were married in July. She teaches French
and is chair of the world languages dept, at Brimmer and
May School in Chestnut Hill, Mass., and he’s pursuing a doc¬
toral degree in French studies at Brown Univ.

GERMAN SCHOOL

David Rachlin (MA 77) recently published a book of po¬
etry entitled Topographies of Light (AuthorHouse.com). He
continues to teach elementary school in Acton, Mass., and is
an adjunct professor in Lesley University’s graduate creative
writing program.

ITALIAN SCHOOL

Natalie Lero Urban (MA 71) writes, “I retired last June af¬
ter 33 years of teaching Italian and Spanish, the last 25 years
at Cranston West (R.l.) High School. I was fortunate to find
a part-time job teaching Italian at Salve Regina Univ. in
Newport, R.l. My classroom is in a beautiful mansion over¬
looking the ocean. It is Paradiso! I look forward to traveling
and spending more time with family and friends.”

MONTEREY INSTITUTE OF
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Working at a nonprofit providing legal aid to the impover¬
ished in his native Pakistan, Amir Murtaza (MAIPS 07) saw
how poor women and their children were treated socially
and to some extent also legally, as second-class citizens. He
set out to study the marginalized in developing countries
where patriarchal and feudal systems often worked to the
disadvantage of the most vulnerable. “I was lucky to have
had a great education and a supportive family,’ says Amir.
Determined to "be the solution,” Amir won a Fulbright
Scholarship and came to Monterey to study international
development and to advance his skills for grassroots level
organizations. Amir describes his current work as a consul¬

When I assumed the responsibility as class
correspondent in the early summer of ’10,
I worked from home, for myself, and had
both flexibility in work schedule and a reasonable amount
of free time to pursue connecting with classmates. Since

tant to major international aid agencies, UN organizations,
and the government of Pakistan as a great way to fund his
passion for helping grassroots organizations. In February of
2011, he started the Human and Community Development
Clinic to provide free technical assistance to cash-strapped
local nonprofit organizations, individuals, and community
groups. Since his graduation, Amir has been extensively
writing on issues related to women and children in Pakistan
and South Asia in an effort to raise awareness. His work has
been widely published in journals, newspapers and websites
of human-rights-focused organizations. • Celebrating 25
years in operation is Stanford Hospital and Clinics medi¬
cal translation and interpretation internship program, which
enrolls nine students from the Monterey Institute every
summer. Students complete 192 hours of intense training
during their 22-day internship and receive a Stanford/MIIS
certificate in medical T&l. Keeping it in the MI IS family is
Stanford internship coordinator Maria de la Paz Garcia
Cortes (MATI 04), who was preceded by Johanna Parker
(MATI 05) and Alexander ‘‘Sasha’’ Vasil ev (MATI 04). •
Two days after the 2012 TEDxMonterey conference, Digital
Learning Commons director Bob Cole (MATESOL 96)—
co-organizer of TEDxMonterey—traveled to Doha. Qatar,
for the TEDxSummit, where he joined other conference
organizers from around the world to explore the future of
TEDx.

SPANISH SCHOOL

In California, Maria and Dick Clark (MA 62) celebrated
their 50th wedding anniversary last summer. They were mar¬
ried in Madrid, Spain, in July 1962. • Fernando Mercado-
Belendez (MA ’64) has a new book out entitled Paid Debts:
History of the Expiation of a Spirit (Dorrance Publishing
Co.). He taught at the Univ. of Puerto Rico-Carolina and
now enjoys retirement in San Juan. • After a career as a
Spanish professor at Columbia Univ., Gus Puleo (MA 85)
entered the seminary and is now a priest at St. Patrick’s
Catholic Church in Norristown, Pa. • JSerra Catholic High
School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., recently hired Rich
Meyer (MA ’03) as the new president. Previously he was
serving as headmaster at Northridge Preparatory School in
Chicago. • Oscar Rollan (MA ’04) is a language teacher at
Sacred Heart Academy in Connecticut. • Song Cho (MA
’05) is an assistant professor of Spanish at Oklahoma Baptist
University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
• Alexia Stempel (MA 12) is working in Madrid for the
Fulbright Foundation and the Assoc, of American Univ.
Programs.

Winter 2013 81

ClassActs

then, I have returned to a corporate position—consumer
and shopper insights director for Pernod Ricard USA
(spirits and wine marketer)—which I really enjoy, but
which is also pretty all-consuming (60-65 hours/week, ex¬
cluding commute time). As a result, I do not have as much
personal/free time as I would like, including time for con¬
necting with classmates. I’d like to still be involved and
would be willing to write and edit the column if someone
else was willing to contact classmates. So anyone interest¬
ed in being a co-correspondent and taking that on, please
be in touch.

— Class Correspondent: John Mutterperl
(john @baldyconsulting. com).

Jennifer Kelley says her life is such chaos,
she “is often lucky to leave the house each
morning with matching shoes.” Jen still
works at Altria, in Richmond, Va., managing its import
and export business. She and her husband now have a
one-year-old son, Merritt, born on November 17, 2011,
joining big sisters Lorelei (5) and Rowan (3). • Elisabeth
Grinspoon Spiro lives in Portland, Ore., and is working
for the U.S. Forest Service. • Kim Bradley, based in Berlin,
was named Monocle's correspondent for Berlin and Austria.
She continues to write a lot, and she has started doing ra¬
dio for the first real time in her life (claiming that her “dj”
show for WRMC doesn’t count), since Monocle started
a radio station in October 2011. Her partner Michael
is teaching at the art academy in Vienna and selling well
in exhibitions in Italy and Mexico, so they are back and
forth often between Vienna and Berlin. Their three-year-
old daughter, Iona, is talking up a storm and loves pink,
Hello Kitty , and The Lion King. • (ireg Allen has owned an
IT consulting company in Denver for seven years, with
mostly oil and gas clients. Greg’s company manages their
systems and wires their offices for network connectivity. •
John Watson joins us in the column after a self-described
news absence of 20 years! John has spent the past 14 of his
post-Midd years in Colorado, mostly on the Front Range.
He went out West with Dcron Chang soon after college.
“Deron eventually went back east and I stayed west, most¬
ly in Colorado except for stints back in Vermont, and in
Michigan (grad school) and Alaska.” In 2012, for a variety
of personal and professional reasons, John moved his small
companies, the Evergreen Education Group andAventouras
(aventouras.com—what a cool company for active travel¬
ers!) to Durango, Colo. John loves the outdoor access. He
still sees Deron and Penny Post ’89 every summer for a
weekend at the Jersey Shore. • Andrew Marble is now liv¬
ing in the Middlebury area. A freelance editor and writer,
he was the founding editor of Asia Policy, a peer-reviewed
journal that bridges the gap between academic research
and policymaking in the Asia-Pacific.

— Class Correspondents: Dawn Cagley Drew (dawnza@gmail.
com); Elizabeth Toder (eatoder@gmail.com).

The Class of 1991 has lots of great news to re¬
port. We were thrilled to hear from some of our
classmates for the first time since graduation!
• Kate Grimes McMahon lives in NYC with her fam¬
ily (boys 5 & 8) and continues to pursue her acting career
(kategrimes.net). She spends the summer between Pound
Ridge, N.Y., where she grew up and Long Island’s North
Fork. She recently had a great visit with Eliza Harding
Tbrner, who stopped by NYC from San Francisco. She
hopes to see everyone at the 25th reunion! • From John
Burrell we heard, ‘After 16 seasons at Western Connecticut
State Univ., I have moved on to Bowdoin College. I’m serv¬
ing as defensive coordinator of the football team, joining
fellow Midd alumni Dave Caputi ’81 (head coach) and
Ryan Sullivan ’95 (offensive line). Bowdoin opened the
season at Middlebury!” • Karen Hamad lives in Sarasota,
Fla., with husband Jon and daughters Lauren (11) and Sage
(9). She’s practicing internal medicine/pediatrics full time
and trying to balance the wife/mother/swim team mom
aspects as well. They spent three weeks this past summer
at the beach house she grew up in on Long Beach Island,
N.J. • Jeremy Braddock is an associate professor in the
English department at Cornell, and his book Collecting as
Modernist Practice came out in 2011 from Johns Hopkins
University Press. He lives in Ithaca—which he reports is
essentially a slightly larger Middlebury—with his wife and
five-year-old daughter. • Karmali “Ali” Bhanji moved to
NYC in 2011 and works as the director of college guid¬
ance at Collegiate School. • Mike Rea, wife Karen, and
daughter Elsie are now in Seattle, where they occasion¬
ally get together with Stephen Fedele at Sounder games.
Mike is with the education group at the Gates Foundation
and has also launched TsunamiPlusio.org, a hobby proj¬
ect looking at the philanthropic legacy of the Boxing Day
Tsunami. At press time, Mike and .Mayra Padilla were
heading off to Sri Lanka. Mayra is collaborating with Mike
and together they were planning to travel throughout Sri
Lanka visiting the people and the places that received tsu¬
nami aid. Mayra’s part of the project was to capture and
bring to fife through film and video the stories from the
people who were the beneficiaries of the tsunami. She
was praying her 20-plus-year friendship with Mike could
withstand the heat and humidity and her surliness in such
environments! • Daanish Mustafa writes, “I am a reader
in politics and environment at King’s College London. I
dispense wisdom to a paying audience and try to sound
more clever than I actually am. 2013 is a sabbatical year for
me, which I’m spending in Kathmandu, doing useful and
important things—such as research—that nobody will read
unless I make them. Any of the Middlebury people blow¬
ing through Kathmandu this year would be most welcome
to look me up—in a pinch I could even supply a couch to
sleep on.”* Alex Herns writes, “I five in Tucson, Ariz., with
my wife Betsy and my 12-year-old twins, and work as the
VP international for a company based in Memphis, Tenn.

I spend a lot of time traveling all over the world in my job,

spending close to 50 percent of my time on the road. Last
summer I took the family on a vacation in Australia; they all
loved it. I would love to see any Midd friends if they come
to Tucson. Still stay in touch with my core group of Midd
friends although we don’t get together as much as I would
like, given everyone’s busy schedules.” • Scott Smithson
has been working as an ERP consultant at Central Data in
Michigan for the last eight years. He took a trip to New
England in the summer and stopped by Middlebury for
the first time in 20 years. • Ray Strong writes, “Since re¬
union, I completed the Ford Ironman in Louisville, Ky.,
with a time of 10 hours and 23 minutes. Post that, I moved
to Houston and have enjoyed margaritas. Melissa and I are
fully set in Houston and welcome visitors. In fact, Steve
Quinn recently did a fly-by. I can be reached at ray.strong@
evercore.com.” • Bill Driscoll shared exciting news of his
recent appointment as chairman of the board of direc¬
tors for Junior Achievement of Northern New England
(JANNE). He’s been on the board since 2007 and has
played an instrumental role in the planning and coordi¬
nation of several of JA’s premier events. Serving “at risk”
youth, JANNE implemented 1,535 programs throughout
200 schools and after-school sites, reaching over 36,000
youth through the efforts of 1,400 trained volunteers for
the 2011-2012 school year. All programs are provided at no
cost to schools and organizations. • Marc andjill Herbster
’89 Bujold and their twin daughters, Helen and Sophie,
traveled from their home in Tampere, Finland, to Italy
for a week. After some time in Florence, where Jill spent
her junior year, they met Jodi Mitchell-Villano ’90, hus¬
band Robert, and daughter Catherine. They all stayed at
a winery in Tuscany for a few days before flying to Finland.
Jodi and family returned back to Miami after three days in
Finland. • In July 2011, Natalya Bald \ ga and husband Ryan
Wheeler welcomed son Leo Joseph Wheeler Baldyga. The
following month they moved 1,300 miles so Natalya could
start a new position at Tufts Univ. At Tufts, she teaches un¬
dergraduate and graduate theater history and direct stage
productions for the Department of Drama and Dance.
After a year as a stay-at-home dad, Ryan was appointed
director of the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology at
Phillips Andover. They love being in the Boston area and
hope to get up to Middlebury for a visit soon. • Dermis
Schaechcr shares his news: “I was ‘up north’ recently and
had the pleasure of dinner in Boston with Paul Wilc ox,
Anthony Storm, Bob Amh i son (Boss dish), and Steve
Quinn. Great to catch up with these old friends. I’m living
in Chapel Hill, N.C., married to Laurie (Hutchins) ’93 with
three kids—Sara (10), Sadie (6), and Dylan (4). I started,
and run, an M&A consulting firm, Business Ownership
Strategies, withjohn I )ahl. Enjoying life, family, work, and
fun in N.C.!” • Keep sending us notes. Your classmates love
to hear from you!

— Class Correspondents: Marika Holmgren (holmgren.
marika@gmail.com); Lucy Randolph Liddell (lucyjiddell@
yahoo.com).

82 Middlebury magazine

I (Sara) am looking for someone to help me as
■ J a class correspondent. Please let me know if
^ vou’d be willing to sign up!

—Class Correspondent: Sara Garcia McCormick (smgyo@gate.
net).

^ REUNION CLASS Sarah Stewart Taylor
M has come out with a new novel, a book for
, y kids this time. She says, “The book, about
kid explorers in an alternate future, was partly inspired
by an African History class I took with John Spencer my
sophomore year at Middlebury.” Entitled The Expeditioners
and the Treasure of Drowned Mans Canyon, the middle-grade
novel is about three orphaned siblings, with half a map,
who are trying to beat an oppressive government to a se¬
cret, gold-filled canyon. • For the last two and a half years,
Randy Weiner has been a cofounder and member of the
design team for Urban Montessori Charter School in
Oakland, Calif. Urban Montessori is the nation’s first pub¬
lic (free) Montessori, arts integration, and design-thinking
school, and the school opened its doors to over 200 fami¬
lies from around the Bay Area in August. Randy also serves
as the chair of the school’s board. • Christian Parker is
serving as the chair of the Columbia Univ. graduate theater
program. • John and Blakely Anderson ’92 Atherton re¬
cently attended a Midd event at the home of John ’90 and
Colleen Quinn Amster ’90 in San Francisco to hear about
the Midd Solar Decathlon team. “It was a great event, and
we were very impressed with the team!”

— Class Correspondents: Maria Diaz (latinawritingfDgmail.
com); Laura LeClair Grace (elsydash@gmail.com ).

A Gene Swift completed the Santa Clarita
Marathon in early November—his second
I of the year (and of his life). Gene had limped
his way across the finish line of the L.A. Marathon back
in March with an IT band injury and made a promise to
himself at the time that he’d fix the problem and improve
upon the performance. New shoes, a new running style,
and several hundred training miles later, Gene knocked
58 minutes off his time. He also climbed the stairs of the
tallest building between Chicago and Auckland as part of
the 2012 Ketchum-Downtown YMCA Stairclimb for Los
Angeles, finishing several minutes faster than he did in his
first try in 2011, but nowhere near as fast as fellow climb¬
er Tim VanOrden ’92. Gene is still living in Los Angeles,
working as the director of marketing and communications
for Wells Fargo Capital Finance, and enjoying being a dad
to his children, Zander and Emily. • Aviation Week & Space
Technology , probably the most widely read industry publica¬
tion in the global aerospace and defense industry, recently
named Marc S/epan one of their “40 Under Forty: Rising
Stars of Aerospace and Aviation.” • Anne Brahic is still in
Park City, Utah, discovering and meeting more Midd al¬
ums in town and down the street each year (Kate Walsh
Geagan among them). Mom to Lucie (5) and wife to TV

CELEBRATIONS

© At the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif.. Adam Taylor ’01 married Lily Brook Abood on August 20 . 2011.
Friends enjoying the celebration included (all '01 unless noted) Sara Cogan. Marika Holmgren ’ 91 . the newlyweds, Rafael
Morales, Molly Witters, (second row) Jeremy Schreiner ’02, Andrew Dutterer, Lansing Davis, Ben Jervey, Carlos Lopez-
Hollis, and Jeff Gangemi. Missing from photo: Kristen Sylva Capodilupo. © Catherine Pullins 00 and Scott Miles were
married on October 2 , 2010, in Nantucket. Mass. ©Elizabeth Baer’04 and Daniel Eichner ’04 were married on June 19 , 2011,
at the Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield, Vt. Celebrating with them were (all ‘04 unless noted) Sarah Dye, Dan Pruksarnukul.
Claire Wolff, Louisa Conrad, the newlyweds, Kate Marder, Julia Proctor 06 , Jean Hamilton, (second row) Adam Harr, Caleb
Elder, Trevor Chisholm. Brenden Mulder-Rosi, Dan Wolf, Phil Aroneanu 06 , Jake Carney, and Lucas Farrell 03 .

O Midd friends from the Class of 1991 met for a mini-reunion at the Wigwam
Resort in Phoenix, Ariz., last November: Sarah Gandrud Robinson. Lucy Randolph
Liddell, Sara Bremner Barry, Kate Kelley, Rebecca Haskell Andersons. Stephanie Blair
Kirkwood, Eileen Walsh Hopper, Holly Beardwood Noordsy, and Heather Morris
Wohl. © Pete Simonson '54 "sees” Dr. Jordan Sterrer ’85 of Eyecare Medical Group
in Portland. Maine, to have cataracts removed from both eyes. The results were
highly successful. © Jed Smith and Michael Obel-Omia. Middlebury board mem¬
bers and 1988 classmates, caught up in California in February during Middlebury s
board meeting in Monterey.

Winter 2073 83

CELEBRATIONS

lighting designer Jon Kusner (who won his second Emmy
this year), Anne continues to stay busy production-design¬
ing sets for TV, including the sets for ABC’s Duets and the
CMT Music Awards, as well as her Emmy-nominated set
for CNN Heroes, among others. Most recently, and in addi¬
tion to her design work, Anne has taken on the position of
director of exhibitions for the Kimball Art Center in Park
City. *Jay Robison and wife Kristi, along with big brother
Mikey, welcomed daughter Zoe Kristine on October 8. •
Heather Dorf Rawlings reports she’s still in Vail and hap¬
py that the real estate market is coming back. Raising one
skiing-obsessed kid and one hockey-obsessed kid keeps
Heather busy, but not too busy to ski with anyone who
finds themself up that way, however! • Christina Jaeger
Tv son caught up with Ed Soh and Hylah Wells Patton in
Middlebury this past fall during a quick visit from London,
where she lives with her three children and husband
Robin. They’re looking forward to spending lots of qual¬
ity time in Vermont this summer—come visit! • T Cooper
has published another book. Entitled Rea/Man Adventures,
this book is a collage of letters, essays, and interviews as he
takes the reader through his transition into identifying as
male, marrying his wife, and becoming a stepfather.

—Class Correspondents: Mary Strife Cairns (mcaims@
middlebury.edu); Gene Swift (geneswifi@mac.com).

0 Jenna Mason-Plunkett ’97 married Brian Strully on Whidbey Island, Wash., on May 14 , 2011. Middlebury friends who
helped them celebrate include (all 97 unless noted) Wendy Goyert, Hana Rubin, Sangwha Hong, the newlyweds, Brett
Hanscom 92 . Amy Diller Kelsey, and Amy Wlodarski. Q In her home country of Sri Lanka, Tesalia de Saram '05 married
David Belanich '05 on August 26 , 2011. They were joined in celebration by Leslie Thompson ’ 05 , the newlyweds, Matthew
Holbreich (Schools Abroad, Paris 03 ), and Shihani de Silva Soysa 03 . Devin Wardell 06 and Brian Cook 06 were mar¬
ried on September 4 , 2011, at the John Peters Estate in Blue Hill. Maine. The bride and groom were surrounded by a raucous
group of friends and family, including (all '06 unless noted) Kelly Brush ’ 08 . the newlyweds, (second row) Grace Kronenberg
Coriell, Leigh Arsenault, Rachel Sommer. Rachel Dunlap, Zeke Davisson ’ 08 , Kat Cooley, Scott Coriell 07 , Isabel Yordan
’ 07 . Christian Solberg ’ 07 , Gillian Thompson ’ 07 . Lisie Mehlman ’ 07 , (third row) Steve Atkinson, Sarah Little, Jake Whitcomb,
Khristoph Becker. Dave Coriell (on tip-toes), Andrew Everett ’ 07 , Matt Depaolo, Jeff Boyink, Tim Foley, Molly Huff ’ 08 ,
Alec Tarberry 08 , and Jen Douglas ' 91 .

O Dn June 25 , 2011. Karina Arrue 07 and Nelson Philip were married at Garden Falls in Monroe Township, N.J. Middle¬
bury friends in attendance were Laura Seidel ’ 06 , JeeYeon Park ’ 08 , maid of honor Elizabeth Chatelain ’ 07 . the newlyweds.
Azaria Shaw 08 . Jamie Zug Oyugi 08 . Meg McFadden Smith ’ 06 . (second row) Ben Wiechman ’ 07 . Julio Chong ' 08 .
Elizabeth Zane 06 , Eric Vos 05 , April Peet Vos 06 . Devon Parish 05 , Andrew Haile 07 , Tyler Smith. Missing from photo:
Melissa Espert 09 and Nondumiso Qwabe 08 Kim McPhearson and Tin Wegel. exchange student 96 were married
on October 12, 2011, at the Office of the City Clerk in Manhattan, NYC.

With our 20th reunion fast approaching (can
y° u believe it!?), JP and Emilv will soon be
S ^ * asking you to share your memories of the
early 1990s at Midd for the class notes. So, dig through
your memory banks and come up with some good stories.
Then, look for them in future editions of the 1995 notes. •
James Wilson had a reunion of his own recently: “Kristin
Hanson ’94 and I recently got together in Bar Harbor,
Maine. My dad joined Kristin, her brother Kirk, and me
for a lobster feed at the Trenton Lobster Pound. Since
the Hansons hadn’t ever had a traditional Maine lobster
(steamed, served with drawn butter), my dad offered ‘re¬
medial lobstah lessons’ to the both of them. We had a great
time and got plenty messy! Maddie, Kristin’s dog, waited
patiently for scraps to fall her way, but left quite deceived.”
• Another reunion of sorts happened at the home of Emil \
Aikenhead Hannon in Sacramento, Calif., last spring.
Jennifer Willingham was visiting from Hinesburg, Vt.,
and Ellen Anderson Holt (also living in Sacramento)
stopped by for a visit! Emily and Ellen’s kids enjoved the
duck pond at a nearby park while the old friends caught
up! • Mi Barber Sanders and family relocated to Indiana
in 2008. She is a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow
at Ball State Univ., where she teaches child development
and adolescent psychology. Her little ones keep her busy
with “every sport that exists!” She would love to hear from
other Middlebury alums in Indiana at aletta@alumni.
middlebury.edu. • From the stage in New York, David
Barlow writes, “I had a great time acting with Midd al¬
ums Alex Draper ’88, Tara Giordano ’02, Megan Bvrne ’96,

84 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

Jay Dunn ’oo, and more recent grads in Potomac Theater
Project’s Serious Money, directed by Middlebury theater
professor Cheryl Faraone at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan.
The show got a bang-up review in the New York Times, so
congrats to Cheryl and PTP! It’s so amazing the quality of
challenging work that my connection to Middlebury con¬
tinues to afford me, now well into my career.” • Also in New
York, Claudio Salas is still at the law firm WilmerHale,
where he was promoted to counsel last January. His boys
are now eight (Dimitris) and six (twins Alejandro and
Stefanos). “Between work and three boys,” Claudio says,
“life’s full!” • And, for running/swimming/biking around
New York, congratulations go to Doug Tsao! “On August
11 ,1 competed in Ironman New York and finished in 9:59.

I finished 75th overall, out of 2,200 racers, and 15th in the
35-39 age group. My running time of 3:11 for the 26.2 run
was 10th fastest for the day, including the pro athletes.
I’m still living in NYC with wife Jennifer and son Owen,
who celebrated his fourth birthday the day after the race.
Two weeks later, we headed up to New England, includ¬
ing a stop in Middlebury.” • Andrea Lathrop sends good
news: “I’m living and working in Cambridge, Mass. My lat¬
est hobby is long-form improv comedy. I perform with a
group called Disco Basement and appeared with them in
the Toronto Improv Festival on October 26.” • Wendy
Ekman Lewis writes, “I opened my own law firm where
I provide indigent defense in civil matters, usually to par¬
ents in jeopardy of losing custody of their children, so I’m a
court-appointed attorney—the kind you get if you can’t af¬
ford a ‘real’ one. It’s outstanding work and I love it. Arnold
is now the director of student activities as well as a Spanish
teacher at the Dawson School in Lafayette, Colo., and
just completed his 10th year with the school. Piper (5) and
Carter (4) are fabulous kids. We love skiing and would love
to reconnect with Middlebury friends if they pass through
Boulder. We just attended a reunion of sorts in Boulder
organized by Midd’s Rocky Mountain Chapter!” • Tarek
and Kate Buckley Rahman, Walker (5), and Zakary (3)
welcomed third son, Kyle William, last April 16. Kate and
Tarek also celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary in
2012 by going to a bad, but nearby, restaurant for about 37
minutes. • t Marine Falkenbcrg Lauterbach writes, “After
moving from Oslo, Norway, six years ago, I have been liv¬
ing in Westport, Conn., with husband Michael ’96 and our
girls Sophia (9) and Nina (6). When the girls settled into
school, I went back to work as a licensed clinical social
worker at a school-based health center, doing individual
and group therapy.”

—Class Correspondents: Emily Aikenhead Hannon (hannon.
emily@gmail.com);JP Watson (jpwatson@atbensacademy.org).

We’d love to hear from classmates!

—Class Correspondents: Amanda Gordon
Fletcher (argfletcher@yahoo.com); Megan
Shattuck (meganshattuck@gmail.com).

The weekend of June 8-10 brought over 50
’97ers back from both near and far, many
with their spouses and families, for our 15th
reunion. After a Friday afternoon thunderstorm, the
weather was gorgeous and campus was more beautiful
than we remembered. Many classmates met at Up’s on
Friday evening for dinner and drinks, Saturday was filled
with walks into town, activities for children, the reunion
parade and ice cream social, and finally loads of fun under
the tents behind the Art Center, dancing to the music of
our own Clint Bierman and the Grift! A great time was
had by all! It was so nice to catch up with classmates as
well as faculty and staff from our days in school. We hope
even more classmates will start making plans to return in
June 2017 for our 20th! • 1 lelen Froclich Plummer writes,
“After six wonderful years in Beijing, my family has relo¬
cated to Oldwick, N.J. My kids, John (6) and Robby (2), are
enjoying the fresh air and we are all adjusting to life in the
U.S.” • Amy Kriescher Care> writes, “Our daughter, Opal
Rose Carey, was born on June 14 in Carpentras, France. She
joins big brother Lyle (4). In August we moved back to the
States after 10 years in France—making the move interest¬
ing by renting an RV and camping across the country from
east to west for five weeks. We are slowly settling back into
the Bay Area.” • The movie Sleepwalk With Me, starring
comedian Mike Birbiglia and produced by Ira Glass was
cowritten by Mike’s brother, Joe Birbiglia. • Welcome to
Jennifer ( ielb ( Barbee, who is joining (.at herine as a cor¬
respondent. You can send them news at the e-mails below!
—Class Correspondents: Jennifer Gelb Carbee (jrgelb@yahoo.
com); Catherine Mitchell Wieman (cnmitchell<)<)@hotmail.
com).

REUNION CLASS \ndfcu \lahl udt
received a PhD in English from the Univ.
of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2012. His
dissertation examined the narratives of poverty in the de¬
veloping world under the weight of recent globalization.
Now to figure out a next step that is not academia, but is
in San Francisco! • Dan ’99 and Mindy Lev inc Ros cnfe kl
and daughter Sydney spent nearly a year living in spectacu¬
lar Sydney, Australia, in 2010—2011. Their second daughter,
Lilah, was born on January 3,2012, a few months after their
return to Burlington, Vt. Mandy and Dan continue to love
living among so many Midd Kids in the Burlington area. •
Tim McMillan writes, “It’s been a while since I sent in an
update and thought the birth of my first son, Luke, was a
good enough reason as any to send one in. Wife Emily and
I welcomed Luke into the world on August 11 and other
than a chronic case of cute he’s doing great. I’m working at
a software company called Ab Initio in Lexington, Mass.,
and living in Cambridge, just outside Davis Square. Emily
and I got hitched on August 23, 2008, at the Harvard Club
in Boston. Midd attendees included Tophcr I ewis, Mark
\lc( orm.ick, Dan Ackerman, and Heather ( orkadcl
Skinner, Mark, Dan, and I have been making a yearly ski

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trip on Superbowl weekend the past few years and we ac¬
tually met up with Eric Lowe last year when we rode Big
Sky. Dr. Lowe says everyone is welcome to crash with him
out in Bozeman if you are in town. • I )arrcn Bloch was
recently named the VP for public affairs at New York Law
School, where he graduated cum laude in 2004. He spent
the past 15 years in government and the private sector fo¬
cused on communications, government relations, public
affairs, and strategic planning. He lives in Brooklyn with
his wife and two daughters and also stays busy with the
recent launch of a Web and mobile platform called Skedj,
which was developed with a small group of friends to help

Winter 2013 85

ClassActs

discover, manage, and share activities and events. • Matt
Gunderson writes, “In August my novel, The Ajnir , a sci¬
ence fiction-metaphysical book, was published by Turning
Stone Press, an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser. I’m cur¬
rently working on promoting the book. I’m also doing
freelance work at the Boston Globe .”

—Class Correspondents: Katie Whittlesey Comstock (katie.
comstock@amjll.com); Nate Johnson (natejohn98@gmail.com).

Sarah Cotton Kajski is living in Seattle
with husband Eric and daughters Hazel Mae
(born March 2010) and Quinn Anne (born
January 2012). •Jennifer Pearsall Robert sent this news
about sister Sarah Pearsall: “Sarah had a baby boy, Finn
Warren Pearsall Lippert, in late March. She and husband
Mike, son Josh, and stepson Tristan are still living it up
in Tribeca (NYC). I was recently in town playing auntie
for a week or so.” • Ted Adler sent news that he’s now a
married man. “Abigail Woodhead and I were married July
28 in Woodstock, Vt., my bride’s hometown. The Grift
played at our wedding and Clint Bierman ’97, Jeff Vallone
’98, Pete Day ’01, and Pete Nilsson rocked! Abigail and I
met when she was in medical school in Burlington. I now
split my time between Boston, where she is completing her
residency at Mass General Hospital in pediatrics this July
(and I am getting my GED in doctor talk), and Burlington,
Vt., where my business is located. I’m still running Union
Street Media, the now 30+ employee Web development
and Internet marketing business that I started with
Middkid.com in the fall of ’99.” • Tom Muchiri Kabuga
and wife Surhi welcomed the arrival of daughter Anahi on
August 10. Their daughter was born at the John Radcliffe
Hospital, University of Oxford, where Surhi is pursuing her
DPhil. Tom has been working in London’s financial sectoj
for the last three years since his MBA. He has recently
joined ClimateCare, a leading emissions reduction project
developer and carbon credit offset retailer. Tom will be
using his experience with impact funds and development
agencies to strengthen ClimateCare’s fund management
team. • Matt ’98 and Samantha Webb Kading announce
the arrival of their third son, Otto Wallace, born on May
31 . Big brothers Atlas and Ansel welcomed him with enthu¬
siasm and the energy level has only increased since then.
Cross-coastal visits with Sarah W aybright Barr, Heather
Budd, and Justine KwilflrowU in Miami and the Bay
Area helped make 2012 an excellent year! • Cameron
Brown Garricpy writes, “On October 23, I released my
first full-length novel under the Bannerwing Books im¬
print. Buck's Landing , a romance set in Hampton Beach,
N.H., is available on Amazon.com in print and for Kindle.

• Peter Steinberg has moved to Boston and is joining
the faculty at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
(BIDMC). He is going to be the codirector of the BIDMC
kidney stone center and codirector of the BIDMC mini¬
mally invasive urology fellowship, as well as an instructor
at Harvard Medical School.

— Class Correspondents: Melissa Pruessing Miraski (mpruessing
@yahoo.com); Peter Steinberg (captfun99@gmail.com).

Michael Duff wrote to say that he is
doing well and has recently started a fel¬
lowship in critical care medicine at
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
• Jess Howe Thomson won the 2012 M.F.K. Fisher
Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing for her piece
on saffron picking in Washington State. Her fourth
cookbook, Dishing Up Washington , was released from
Storey Publishing in November. Check out her blog at
jessthomson.wordpress.com. • Colleen Bramhall and
Adam Popkin were married on August 11 in Grand Isle, Vt.
Many Midd friends from the Class of 2000 were in atten¬
dance as well as a handful of Midd Kids from other classes.
Colleen was also delighted to say that the Midd fight song,
“Gamaliel Painter’s Cane” and the Alma Mater were all
belted out and dutifully butchered. • Amanda Perla is
happy to report that she recently moved to Santa Monica
from San Francisco, started a new position as director of
admissions at PSi Pluralistic School, and is enjoying the
warm Southern California weather. • Philip Dean Walker
has published the following short stories: “Unicorn”
in Big Lucks 4 (summer 2011), “Caravan” in Collective
Fallout (September 2012), “A Goddess Lying Breathless in
Carnage” in Obsession Lit Mag (September 2012), and “At
Danceteria” in Jonathan (December 2012). His personal
essay “The Other Side of the Game” will be anthologized
in The Other Man: Twenty-Two Writers Uncover the Truth
About Sex, Deception, Love and Betrayal (ed. by Paul Alan
Fahey and forthcoming in May). He’s in his last year of
an MFA at American Univ. in Washington, D.C. • Allison
Greenwood Bajracharya was recently promoted to se¬
nior VP of statewide advocacy at the California Charter
Schools Assoc. She reports she’s “busy balancing work and
motherhood (I’ve got two amazing kids) but enjoying the
challenges and opportunity to affect education reform on
multiple levels.” • Christa McDougall Vaughan is happy
to share that she and husband Christopher ’98 welcomed
daughter Charlotte Alden Vaughan last March 9. On
Labor Day weekend, Charlotte hung out with Sylvia Ryan
Gappa, Beth Denoncourt, Michelle Labbe Hunter ’01,
and hockey coach Bill Mandigo at the wedding of Sarah
Carpenter ’01. Happy times!

—Class Correspondents: David Babington (davidbabington@
gmail.com); Lindsay Simpson (simpsonlindsay@yahoo.com).

Josh Broder and wife Eliza welcomed a
baby boy named Clayton in late April. Josh
reports that Clayton is still working on his
sleeping skills but looking forward to being in the future
Middlebury Class of 2030! • Bob and Jessica Silverman
’00 Bryan recently moved to a new house in Twinsburg,
Ohio, the town they’ve lived in for six years with their
three children. • Amanda Birns Roth and her family took

a vacation in Burlington, Vt., over the summer and stopped
in Middlebury on the way up to have lunch at Noonie’s.
The family wishes they could get sandwiches like that on
Long Island! Amanda has a daughter, Emma, who started
kindergarten in the fall and son Jacob (3) with her husband
Mark. • Kristen Sylva Capodilupo, husband Larry, and
children Dylan, Maya, and Olivia moved to Needham,
Mass., at the end of July, joining fellow classmates Corey
and Kate Griffiths Wilk, and Zach Bourque and their
families in the now-famous hometown of Olympic gold
medalist Aly Raisman. • Rachel Rackow and husband
Michael Quinn had a daughter, Ella Louise, on June 22.
Just before Ella was born, Rachel finished her internal
medicine residency, and she started a fellowship in pal¬
liative care in October. • Mark and Jennie Mandeville
Harrington moved to Winchester, Mass., in December
2011 and are loving suburban life (and the driveway park¬
ing and yard space that it allows). They also welcomed
their second daughter into the world. Zoe Ann Harrington
was born on March 10, and her older sister Eva is smitten!
• Kelvin Roldan married Kaitlin Halloran on August 11 in
Hartford, Conn. In attendance were best man Mathew
Sorokin, Corey and Kate Wilk, Andrew Haley and
wife Stephanie, Lois and George Stark (parents of the late
Daniel Stark), Francisco and Erin Sussman Peschiera,
Matthew Markowski, Bob Bryan, and Dauvin
Peterson and wife Vidisha. • Peter Day writes, “The mu¬
sical life continues to be inspiring and productive—I’m still
spending lots of time rocking out with Clint Bierman ’97
and Jeff Vallone ’98, and frequent collaborators Rich Price
’99 and Greg Naughton ’90 (from the Sweet Remains). The
Grift has been playing some amazing shows as we keep
filling the barrel with new tunes. Look for us this winter
at Vermont ski areas and beyond! And in other big news
I spent the summer working on a solo project, meaning
it should be ready for listening by the time Middlebury
Magazine finds your mailbox!” • Rafael Morales recently
became Community Development Program Fellow at the
San Francisco Foundation, after nearly nine years work¬
ing in various capacities at the National Federation of
Community Development Credit Unions, including as
West Coast program officer for the past three-and-a-half
years. • Elizabeth Black recently joined Cascadia Law
Group, an environmental law firm in Seattle. Elizabeth
spent the last four years in New York, practicing environ¬
mental law and general litigation with Carter Ledyard &
Milburn. She’s enjoying the cooler climate and looking
forward to exploring the Pacific Northwest.

— Class Correspondents: Leslie Fox Amould (leslieamould@
gmail.com); MichaelHartt (hartt@alumni.middlebury.edu).

Elizabeth Beetem Brush writes, “I mar¬
ried Colin Brush in Carmel, Calif, on July
31, 2010. I gave birth to a daughter, Natalie
Elise Brush, on April 11, 2012. We took her to Europe in
July 2012 visiting Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Morocco, and

86 Middlebury magazine

Gibraltar.” • Chris and Lauren Cacciapaglia Sargent wel¬
comed a baby girl in October, Noelle Sargent. • Andrew
and Dana Gordon Dombrowski welcomed a baby boy,
Mylo Dombrowski, who was born right when Hurricane
Sandy hit NYC. Luckily everyone is doing well. • Yuri
Lawrence reports that he is in his second year as a small
animal internal medicine resident at Oregon State Univ.
College of Veterinary Medicine and a PhD student in the
department of microbiology at Oregon State. • This past
fall, Alexis and Laura Burke Studley welcomed another
“studly Studley” to the world, baby girl Olive Rose.

— Class Correspondents: Anne Alfano (anne.alfano@gmail'.
com); Stephen Messinger (s.messing@gmail.com).

REUNION CLASS Sophie Esser Calvi
is back on campus and thrilled to be manag¬
ing the College’s Organic Farm, where she
did an internship while at Midd. After graduation she ven¬
tured out into the wider world of food and wine, where she
has worked for wineries and various garden, farm, and food
organizations. She holds a master’s in food culture and
communications from the Univ. of Gastronomic Sciences
in Italy. Sophie and husband Benjamin ’02, who is a wine¬
maker, live on Lake Bomoseen with son Arthur, who keeps
them busy and very, very happy!

— Class Correspondent: Meagan Dodge (mdodge@alumni.
middlebury. edu).

We’d love to hear from classmates!

—Class Correspondents: Julia Herwood
Breedon (julia.breedon@gmail.com); Athenia
(Tina) Fischer-Rodney (princess1328@yahoo.com).

Nicole Grohoski and Jon Stuart-Moore
met up with Elissa Denton ’06 in Spokane,
Wash., for an 850-mile bicycle tour through
Idaho, the Canadian Rockies, and Glacier National Park,
ending in Bozeman, Mont., this past summer. They crossed
the Continental Divide three times, saw three bears, and
ate three-plus meals per day. The crew ran into many Midd
Kids along the way, including Caitlyn Long (also on a bike
tour from the Tetons to Banff) and also Carrie Webster ’06,
Ben Brouwer ’04, and Matt ’02 and Heather Beal LaRocca
’02. Nicole returned to Vermont, where she works in
Burlington as a GIS specialist, volunteers in Winooski at
the fire dept., and hangs out with the Midd expat crew, in¬
cluding her roommate Natalie Guarin, who is studying at
UVM to be a nurse practitioner. Jon is back in Eagle Butte,
S.D., on the Cheyenne River Reservation, where he and his
fiancee, Megan Guiliano ’07, work at the Cheyenne River
Youth Project. Elissa headed back to Ashland, Ore., where
she manages youth programs for Planned Parenthood of
Southwestern Oregon and has enrolled in a yoga-teacher
training. • Ted Lester accepted a position at MITRE
Corp., located in Bedford, Mass., as senior systems en¬
gineer. He recently was employed at Avidyne Corp. as a

product manager. “I moved to MITRE, a nonprofit fed¬
erally funded research and development center, in March
in order to pursue new challenges in supporting our armed
forces, using the skills I obtained at Midd and afterwards.”
—Class Correspondents: Martha Dutton (martha.dutton@
gmail.com); Dena Simmons (dena.simmons@gmail.com).

To paraphrase Mitch St. Peter, winter is
generally a season cold and bereft of hope,
but with the buoyant spirits of ’o6ers, it’s
always a long, warm, and lustrous season. Speaking of
Mitch and the warmth, he made the move down to L.A.
in September. Primarily the move was so he could see
more of your intrepid class reporter Jack Donaldson,
but also so that he could start at UCLA Business School.
•Jocelyn Florence started business school at Booth, at
the Univ. of Chicago, with the goal of opening her own
performance venue. Mike Emery also started there this
fall. «The graduate degrees keep coming with Ali Shapiro
getting her MFA at Univ. of Michigan, Christina Galvez
in her second year at RISD, and Liz Somes at Baylor in her
second year of med school. • Dan Saper, usually known as
an audiobook fanatic, espadrille aficionado, and horrific
fantasy football player, can now also be known as a mar¬
ried man! Dan tied the knot with Jill Pervere in October,
on the Pebble Beach coast. (“The greatest meeting of land
and water in the world,” says wedding guest Ian Duffy.) In
attendance were numerous ’o6ers, including East Coasters
Michele Bergofsky, Nate Edmunds, Michael Kagan,
Andreas Apostolatos, Ian Duffy, and Sean and Virginia
Harper ’07 Breen. They were all lucky enough to spend a
few extra days in California, thanks to Hurricane Sandy.
For the West Coasters in attendance, including Alex
Casnocha and Mitch St. Peter, they were able to cele¬
brate not only the wedding, but also a Giants World Series
victory. Dan and Jill are ringing in 2013 with a three-month
trip to Thailand. • Ryan Armstrong and wife Alisha wel¬
comed son Canon into the world. He’s a beautiful boy
already with aspirations of breaking his father’s single¬
season batting title record at Middlebury. • In September,
Ben Bruno, Erica Goodman, Russ Johanson, Andrea
LaRocca, and Kirsten Nagel met up in Corning, N.Y.,
to run in the Wineglass Marathon and Half Marathon. It
was an impressive showing for the Middlebury crew, with
Ben, Erica, Russ (with a broken rib), and Kirsten all put¬
ting up marathon times that were fast enough to qualify
them for the Boston Marathon. Andrea improved on her
previous personal-best half-marathon time by seven min¬
utes. Most importantly, the crew had a great weekend
together. • Alison Lacivita completed her coursework at
the University of Dublin Trinity College and was awarded
a PhD in English. She continued her teaching assistant du¬
ties for the remainder of the academic year at Trinity and
is looking forward to the next adventure in an academic
career. • Krissy Joseph writes, “I just bought my very first
house in Houston, Texas, where I now reside and work

for Schlumberger Ltd., where my focus is on geophysical
software. I go back to Trinidad about twice a year and met
up with my sis, Annelise Joseph ’05, for Carnival in Miami
in October.” • Lucas Kavner and Hunter Stuart live in
NYC and work for the Huffington Post , writing and pro¬
ducing video content. • Whitney Bogliogi married Bryan
Lodigiani ’05 in a beautiful wedding in Chittenden, Vt.
Scattered showers gave way to a beautiful double rainbow
immediately prior to the outdoor ceremony. Numerous
Midd Kids were in attendance including Elizabeth
Johnston, Heather Wright Vickery, Brittany Potz,
Ryan Armstrong, Andrew Pavoni, Dom DiDomenico,
Tyler Bak, Alex Casnocha, Emily Lisbon, and Clark
Peterson. • There were lots of matrimonial causes for
celebration this summer and fall. Class correspondent
Jess Van Wagenen married Liam O’Rielly (UVM ’07) at
Shelburne Farms, Vt., on June 23. The weekend of festivi¬
ties reunited tons of Midd friends and she is so grateful to
everyone who made the trip and helped make her dream
of karaoke-ing post-wedding a reality. 'Three couples con¬
tributed to fulfilling the Middlebury marriage prophecy:
Courtney Swanda and Mike Philbin got married on June
23 at Round Barn Farm in Waitsfield, Vt. Dozens of Midd
2006 friends were in attendance. Between the two Midd
weddings on June 23, we think half our class was in Vermont
that day! • Mike Ratpojanakul and Caryn LoCastro ’07
tied the knot on August 18 in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with an
entourage of Midd Kids, perfect weather, and an after-
party with a tub filled with Busch Lights. • Josh Carson
and Fran Filippelli made it official on September 29 in Red
Hook. Guests were treated to unbelievable food, amazing
dancing from Brazilian relatives, and an encore perfor¬
mance of Gangnam Style. Multitudes of Midd friends were
on hand to celebrate! • And finally, the moment all of you
have been waiting for—the Tyler Bak update! Hailing
from Northampton, Mass., and Deerfield Academy, this
blue-eyed charmer matriculated to Middlebury in the fall
of 2002. Like many Middlebury men before him, he loved
the mountains ofVermont and prospered in and out of the
classroom. After four blissful years he was ready to move
on to a career. At this point, let’s go right to a quote from
Tyler: [Editors Note: due to space limitations, we regretfully
were unable to include Tyler’s quote in this issue. We apologize
and will make every effort to get it in next time. ]

—Class Correspondents: Alex Casnocha (alexander.casnocha@
gmail.com); Jack Donaldson (jack.c.donaldson@gmail.com); Jess
Van Wagenen O’Rielly (jessorielly@gmail.com).

Aaron Ackerman has been working in
Minnesota for the past couple of years as a
program manager for an international eco¬
nomic and community development NGO in West Africa
(OneVillage Partners). He moved to rural Sierra Leone
this past July for a two-year field officer position to help
expand his work to new villages. He also served as the Twin
Cities Alumni Chapter leader the last two years and had a

Winter 201J 87

ClassActs

great time catching up with his old Battell friend Kristin
Nielson this summer in Minneapolis during her MBA
internship at Target. • Tom Boardman has been working
as an assistant video editor at Crew Cuts Film and Tape
for almost five years now. In the past year he has worked
on commercials for Siemens, Comcast, Maybelline, and
American Express. He’s also putting the finishing editorial
touches on a short film that he hopes will make it into the
Sundance Film Festival (fingers crossed!). He still lives in
the financial district in NYC and spends time with David
Bubb, Joel Wolfram, and Matthew Hershenson. In
June Tom ran the Covered Bridges Half Marathon with
Bethany Holmes, and Brooke Smith. • Emily Adler
married Jay Boren ’06 at Lake George on September 8,
with lots of Midd alums in attendance. The couple left
their San Francisco lives to kick off their marriage with
an extended honeymoon: they bike-toured through Italy,
Slovenia, and Croatia and then met up with siblings and
other Middlebury friends for a 21-day trip down the Grand
Canyon in November. • Carlos Beato finished his second
master’s from NYU in May 2011 (education administra¬
tion) and recently started a position as assistant principal at
the New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math
and Science, where he is in charge of the ninth grade cohort
and social studies instructional team. He also took on the
role of visiting instructor/coordinator for the Middlebury
Urban Education J-Term Internship. • Brooke Adams re¬
ports there’s not much new in her life, although we don’t
believe her. She has been in NYC since we graduated and
for the past two years has been working as the director of
communications of Eataly. She says it’s been fun and cool
to have helped open something that’s somewhat of a New
York fixture now. - Jess Cox Coulter is back in her home¬
town of Missoula, Mont., working as a behavior specialist
for kids with severe emotional disorders in the local school
system. After teaching elementary school for two years in
Chicago, she completed a master’s in applied ethics at
Oregon State Univ. She was joined by friends from Midd
and others last summer at her wedding to husband Frank.

• Will McDonough and wife Nicole celebrated the birth
of their second child, Jonah Reed McDonough, on May 26
in Norwalk, Conn. Jonah joins big sister Naomi in lament¬
ing the loss of their favorite playmates, Bruce Hallett ’10
and Sarah Bryan ’10, who just moved to Colorado. • Astri
von Arbin Ahlander and Joseph Bergan were married on
August 17 in Stockholm, Sweden. The ceremony was held
in the Stockholm Cathedral, followed by a reception at the
House of Nobility. Many spirited Middlebury friends were
in attendance. 'That’s it for now. If you want to get in touch
with any of us, Rebecca (Browngoehl) left NYC with her
husband, Daniel Feinberg, after five glorious years and
has settled down in Philadelphia, where she is working in
HR and recruiting at a boutique consulting firm. Bryant
Park has sadly bid adieu to Isabel Yordan, who after five
years at the New York Public Library, is now helping build
support for the Nature Conservancy out of New Haven.

And, if you’re looking for Nura, we hope you brought your
passport! She’s living in Tunisia and is building democracy
and pretty much saving the world. Until next time!

Class Correspondents: Rebecca Browngoehl Feinberg
(fetnbergrebecca@gmail.com); Nura Suleiman (nura.suleiman@
gmail.com); Isabel Yordan (icyordan@gmail.com).

REUNION CLASS Greetings Class of
’08! Alex Schoen and Teddy Crecelius
were married in Vermont on August 11, after
having been together since being across-the-hall neigh¬
bors in B2S their first semester at Midd. Their wedding
was attended by other 2008 alums including JeeYeon
Park, Ptarmigan Abbott, Evan Ellenberger, and Ryan
Tauriainen (in spirit). • In May, Laura Budzyna finished
her MPA in development practice at Columbia Univ.
She’s now working as an independent consultant in New
York, conducting field research and analyzing data for mi¬
crofinance and global health agencies and piloting a new
curriculum initiative at Columbia. • After college, Tristan
Axelrod and his now-wife Sarah (Luehrman) moved to
an industrial city in northern Italy. Tristan wrote a book
about it {Stranieri: Life Among Italy's Tourists, Expats, and
Immigrants) that was published August 20 by Belfort and
Bastion. He writes as Tristan Gans (his middle name) to
separate his author persona from his legal career—Tristan is
also a student at Boston College Law School. He recently
accepted a two-year clerkship with Judge Erik Kimball at
the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida,
which will begin when he graduates in 2014. Sarah helped
write and promote the book. • Alexandra Garcia ’07 and
Morgane Richardson returned from a year in Costa Rica,
where Morgane graduated from the UN University for
Peace with an MA in gender and peace building. They’re
living together in Brooklyn, N. Y., where Morgane is work¬
ing as an adjunct professor at Hunter College, teaching a
course on feminism new media and health and Alexandra
is entering grad school at Pacific College to study tra¬
ditional oriental medicine. They recently met up with
Louis Lobel in New Hampshire before his departure for
law school in Austin, Texas. • Chris Rominger is in Tunis,
Tunisia, where he will be until spring, studying Arabic
and doing archival research as part of his history PhD at
the City University of New York Graduate Center. • Emi
Neithercut started at the Univ. of Michigan Ross School
of Business. • Clayton Reed was living in Lake Tahoe
in 2011, working as a full-time ski coach at Sugar Bowl
Academy. He moved back to Boston in the fall of 2011
and now is working at Conservation Services Group. The
company manages a statewide residential energy-auditing
program, and Clayton is out in the field managing energy
auditors. He’s also doing a master’s program in global ener¬
gy management at UC Denver. And he is the assistant ski
coach at Babson College. Clayton went on a 10-day white-
water rafting and camping trip down the Salmon River in
Idaho for the bachelor party of Andrew “Billy” Wagner

’09. Clayton, Jed Yeiser, Tripp Burwell ’09, Bart DiFiore
’09, Cam MacKugler ’09, Brian Swartz ’10, and Christian
Woodard ’10 were all in attendance. • Ethan Robert is
now an associate with Lincoln Property Company, a com¬
mercial real estate firm. He’s still living in the same Beacon
Hill apartment with Tilly (Mike Gentile) in Boston.
Ethan sees Dan Goulette and Adam Posner a lot, and
the three have suffered through some Red Sox games to¬
gether. Adam is still working for the Harvard Management
Co. Dan just started at the physician assistants school at
Northeastern, after working at Children’s Hospital for a
couple years. Tilly works for Industrial Economics, an envi¬
ronmental consulting firm in Cambridge. • Liza Reynolds
lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for the Center
for Global Development (CGD), an international develop¬
ment policy think tank that aims to reduce global poverty
and inequality. Her work focuses on European policy, and
she helped to open a CGD office in London last year. Liza
coleads the Middlebury alumni chapter in D.C. and has
enjoyed staying connected to the College community. She
traveled to Vail, Boston, Virginia, Nantucket, and Martha’s
Vineyard to visit Yanik Bababekov, Harrison Bane,
Peyton Coles, Brooke Farquhar, James Kerrigan,
Liana Sideli, Adam Weisman, and Zmira Zilkha. Liza
applied to graduate school in the fall and plans to pursue a
joint master of public health and business degree. • Audrey
Nelson is happily coloring with crayons and teaching third
grade at Greenwich Academy, while she finishes her mas¬
ter’s in New York. She hopes to go abroad next year, but
not before she spends more quality time with Midd Kids in
NYC, Vermont, Boston, and the West Coast. • Feel free to
send in updates at any time to Michelle or Laura.

— Class Correspondents: Michelle Cady (michelle.elizabeth.
cady@gmail.com); Laura Lee (laurawhitneylee@gmail.com).

We’d love to hear what classmates are up to!
Send us your news!

— Class Correspondents: Billie Borden (billie.
borden@gmail.com); Eva Nixon (evanixon@gmail.com).

In traditional Middlebury fashion, the Class
of 2010 is getting outside! Last summer, Jenny
Erwin led a variety of outdoor trips and went
on an epic bike tour of the South with her family along
the Natchez Trace trail. She’s now in Boulder, Colo., tak¬
ing graduate classes in environmental engineering and
enjoying all the super-fun things Boulder offers. • Will
James has also been living in Colorado and is located in
Denver. Right out of school, he worked for the Colorado
Geological Survey but has switched to an oil and gas com¬
pany. When not working, he has been doing a lot of skiing
and mountain biking, as well as lots of hiking, camping,
and some hunting (turkey, bear, elk). • Joining the ranks
out West, Emily Allison is living in Bozeman, Mont.,
and is beginning her second year of coaching year-round
for the local Nordic ski club, Bridger Ski Foundation. She

88 Middlebury magazine

CELEBRATIONS

coaches high school racers, organizes training camps, and
supports her athletes at races all over the western U.S. This
past summer, she led a monthlong trip to Tanzania for
Overland. Her group of high school charges volunteered
at an orphanage and primary school, went on safari, and
the entire group summited Mount Kilimanjaro! • Lauren
Fritz is living in Anchorage, Alaska, and training full time
as a Nordic skier. She hopes to make the 2014 Winter
Olympics! • Jamie Mittelman works as a conservation
market analyst of the World Wildlife Fund’s Freedom
to Roam initiative. This past year she published a book
entitled Butter Tea and Banana Soup; Food as Identity , a col¬
lection of memoirs and personal stories from students of
the Asian Univ. for Women, which uses food as a conduit
for identity. • Several members of the class are hitting the
books again! After working at the Beckman Research
Institute of City of Hope National Medical Center, Tats
Fujii is starting medical school at the Keck School of
Medicine at USC. • After a brief stint in Boston, Mark
Kelly has found his way back to Vermont. He has bounced
between tech and healthcare jobs and is finishing his pre-
med coursework while doing research with the UVM
Department of Family Medicine. He spends his free time
feeding his maple syrup addiction. • After earning an MS
in geology from the Univ. of Montana, Missoula, working
as an amateur huckleberry picker on the side, and liv¬
ing with Jared Bean ’09, Spencer Paddock ’09, and Brett
Woelber ’09, Victor Guevara is starting a PhD in geology
at Virginia Tech. He hopes to devour a large quantity of
pulled pork during his time in Blacksburg. • Claire Luby
spent roughly six months working for the president’s spe¬
cial commission on the BP oil spill and is going into her
second year of a master’s in plant breeding at the Univ. of
Wisconsin, Madison. She fives with fellow ’10 graduates
Eric Elderbrock, Glen Fricden, Cecilia Goldschmidt,
and Emily Jones. • Canem Ozyildirim quit her job in
NYC as the regional representative of Greenpeace USA,
and after spending a proper summer at home in Istanbul
for the first time in six years, moved to London for a mas¬
ter’s in international development at University College
London. • Nick Alexander moved back to Australia
after graduation and fives in Sydney, studying law and
working part time in a boutique firm in the city’s center.
He spends most of his spare time at the beach, enjoying
the relief from the harsh Middlebury winters, traveling
around Oz, reconnecting with his country, and becom¬
ing fully Aussified! He meets up with Midd Kids Nikolas
Riefkohl ’13, Jeronimo Riefkohl ’11, and Juan Diego
Farah every year in the Gili Islands in Indonesia. • Maggie
Bale finished her MPH at Emory Univ. and started her
Peace Corps service in Botswana in September, where
she is working on HIV/AIDS prevention through health
education. • Annie Sullivan spent the summer between
her first and second year of medical school in Costa Rica
doing a medical Spanish program, working in a clinic, and
traveling around Central America. She’s now in her second

O In Moorestown. N.J., on September 10. 2011. Meaghan McGrath 08 and Mark Egan 08 were married. Friends from the
Class of 2008 helped celebrate: Steve Gordon, Jay Dolan. Kristin Fraser, Abby Fox-Willman. Robbie de Picciotto, Caitlin
Taylor Reiche, the newlyweds, AnnMarie Wesolowski, Jesse Davidson, Lauren Van Wagenen, Lathan McCall, and Sahir
Iqbal O A large group of ’84ers skied the beautiful mountains of Vail, Colo., for four days last March: (kneeling) Mark
Ray, Adam Baker. Ken Rapuano, Anne Chapman, Bill Flathaway, Peter Tichansky, Patrick McCormick, (standing) Buck
Dominick, Tom Knox. David Torres, Andrew Zehner, Larry Goldstein, B.J. Paik, Jason Bacon, and Mike Ballard (friend).
0 Lily Knopman 06 and Ari Beilin '06 married on September 4. 2011. at Spruce Camp Base Lodge in Stowe, Vt. Many
Midd friends joined them in celebration: (all '06 unless noted) Brittany Potz. Eddie Allen, Emily Egan Allen, the newlyweds,
Leah Wildenger, Ali Golden, Georgia Jolink, Laura McMahon, (second row) Jeff Oldenburg, Mark Loper, Mark Spadaccini.
Tyler Furnari, McKenna Moreau, George Mayer '07. Virginia Harr, Andrew Jacobi '05, Brian Waldron, (third row) Kevin
Bright, Nate Edmunds. Peter Robson '88. Cole Parlin, Alex Meditz '05, Justin Ingoglia '05. Matt Rales, and Alex Scott '07.
Missing from photo: Evan Beilin 09, Christopher Humphrey, Kevin Bergesen 07. and Dyane Sunn Waldron 72.

Q On August 6. 2011. Christina Winters 99 married Howard Blaustein at the Bridgehampton Tennis and Surf Club. Friends
who helped the couple celebrate included (all '99 unless noted) Stacy Graham O’Connell 98, Lyndley Mercer Mittler.
Mama Whittington McDermott, (second row) Mike Melone. Morgan Porzio. Rite Moisio Bouchner. the newlyweds. Liza
Shaw. Matthew OConnell 00. Liza Hinman. Hannah Flynn, and Tim Ireland. O Friends from the Class of 1984 celebrated
birthdays in Florence, Italy, and also attended Middlebury’s 50th anniversary of La Scuola Italiana: Ann Gustafson Sorice.
Brenda Grassey, and Lissie Rodriguez Chandler.

Winter 201J 89

ClassActs

year at UConn and hopes to put her Spanish to use while
volunteering in the student-run clinic in Hartford. • Ema
Zubovic is in her first year of med school at Washington
Univ. in St. Louis. • Lindsay Winstead left her job at a
NYC architecture firm and this fall moved to Providence,
R.I., where she began classes in an intensive program in the
interior architecture department at RISD. • Kelly Janis
returned to Midd this past summer to begin her studies at
the Bread Loaf School of English. She’s in her third year
of teaching sixth grade English in San Antonio, Texas. •
Raina Crawford is also teaching, having finished her mas¬
ter’s in childhood and special education at Manhattanville
College and a two-year internship at Greenwich Academy,
where she also coached varsity field hockey. She recently
became a head fourth grade teacher at Avenues: The World
School, in NYC. • Send any updates to Mike, Tim , or
Hannah. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
—Class Correspondents: Hannah Burnett (hannahcbumett@
gmail.com); Tim Henderson (tim.k.henderson@gmail.com);

Mike Waters (m.lewis.waters@gmail.com).

n Wedding bells have started ringing for the Class
of 2011! Congratulations to Colin Taylor and
Cher Griffith for their wedding on July 2, and
to Megan Mishler and Chris Meyers, who celebrated
their wedding on July 21. We wish you all the best! •
Litsey Corona has been living in Taichung, Taiwan, since
September 2011, where she splits her time between learn¬
ing Chinese and interning at South Pole Carbon Asset
Management. • David Peduto is on his third trip for his
company, Global Rescue, to Islamabad, Pakistan, where
he’s been helping set up the company’s first overseas office.
David writes, “It’s the same company that evacuated the
Middlebury students from Alexandria, Egypt, back in ear¬
ly 2011.” Next, he’ll be heading to Bangkok, Thailand, for
three months to help with the new office there. • Celine
Lim is working with the Amazon Conservation Assoc,
in Cusco, Peru, as a Princeton in Latin America fellow. •
Alena Gicsche is moving to Bern, Switzerland, to start
a master’s in climate science—“Woohooo for the Alps!”

• Eric Bartolotti will start a master’s in a four-semester
double-degree program at the Hochschule Magdeburg-
Stendal and the German-Jordanian Univ., where he will
study specialized translation—Arabic/German/English. •
Lauren Sanchez writes, “After an incredible year abroad
in Fez, Morocco, and summer adventures with giant tor¬
toises on the Galapagos Islands, I have moved to New
Haven, Conn., to begin my graduate studies. I’m now a
master’s in environmental science candidate at Yale School
of Forestry and Environmental Studies and extend a warm
welcome to any Midd alums in the area!” • Elise Cohen
recently moved to the D.C. area and enjoys teaching stu¬
dents with autism at the Ivymount School in Maryland. •
After finishing a master’s in Greek and/or Latin languages
at Oxford Univ., Margaret Clark started a PhD in clas¬
sics at the Univ. of Texas at Austin. • Moria Kohinson

was a biology field tech last summer, chasing butterflies
in Nevada and reuniting with fellow ’ner Connor Wood,
who was studying coyotes in the same area. Moria started
a PhD program at UC Davis in the fall. • Cat Miller loves
Chicago, where she started the dance/movement therapy
and counseling graduate program at Columbia College
Chicago last summer. • Anthony Kuchan moved to the
Upper West Side in Manhattan with Chris Marshall, won
a NYC basketball league championship with David Reed
in the spring, and was planning to take the CFA Level
I exam in December. He was also able to have a mini¬
reunion with Gary Cooper in Prague last spring. He says,
“The ties forged at Middlebury run deep, deep enough
for a transatlantic visit!” • Also in New York, Jessica
Halper is finishing a postbaccalaureate in premedicine
and hopes to apply to medical school this spring. When
not drowning in the wonderful world of organic chemis¬
try, she works at Bellevue Hospital in the adolescent and
child psychiatric unit, meeting with patients ages 4-17 and
performing screens for trauma history, depression, and
post-traumatic stress disorder. She says, “Their histories
are shocking, disheartening, and often hard to stomach.
Yet they are still young—a promising quality in the world
of psychiatric medicine—and while old memories cannot
be forgotten, new ones can be made.” • Tom Crocker is
working as a logistics coordinator for Overland and lov¬
ing it. A summer of great trips enabled him to work with
Lauren Sanchez, Hannah Orcutt, and 1 van Dovle, as
well as many other past and current Middlebury students!
He’ll be sticking with Overland for at least another year-
after taking a monthlong vacation, including a two-week
trip to Colombia with his brother. • Harrison Brown
is working in D.C. as a strategic analyst at the Advisory
Board Company. He enjoys living with a fellow Midd
grad, James Pates ’12. • Shannon Engelman writes, “I
started an MPH program in environmental health at the
Univ. of Minnesota in the fall and I’m also working for a
group called Team Diarrhea at the Minnesota Dept, of
Health, monitoring foodborne diseases in the state. Great
name, huh?” • Pommy Mayel! is a project manager with
the Fullbridge Program, a start-up in Harvard Square.
He’s disappointed to report he still has not spotted Mark
Zuckerberg. • John Szmyd writes, “Since January 2012,
I’ve been working as a research manager for a hedge fund
called Teton Capital Advisers in Jackson, Wyo. If any Midd
skiers/snowboarders are visitingjackson Hole this winter,
please contact me (jszmyd@middlebury.edu) or call/text at
630.498.7261. Think snow! Cheers to all the fun days rid¬
ing Sugarbush, Mad River, and of course, the Snow Bowl!”

• We’d like to second those cheers—to all the fun days in
general at Middlebury! Stay in touch with us at midd20ii@
gmail.com. Thanks for all the updates!

— Class Correspondents: Ashley Cheung (cheung.ash@gmail.
com); Carly Lynch (cjlynch489@gmail.com).

Hello Class of 2012! It’s hard to believe over
six months have passed since our graduation.
Please continue to send us updates about
your social and professional news! • Gavin Bauer spent
the summer working at a pizza shop and then hitch¬
hiked/rode his bike and looked for work. • Claire Bovet
has begun her first year of medical school at the Univ. of
Colorado! • Oksana (Iherezova is working as a business
immigration analyst at Seyfarth Shaw in Boston. • Sara
Cohen works as an admissions counselor at Middlebury
College. • Caroline Cordlc is a project assistant at King &
Spalding, Atlanta, Ga. • Chime Dolma spent the summer
teaching at the Taft School and now teaches in Asheville,
N.C. • Liya Gao is working as an assistant at Paradigm
Talent Agency in motion picture lit. • Siau Rui Goh is a
subsidiary rights assistant at Penguin USA. • Catherine
Hayes is working in a research lab at UVM and as an as¬
sistant coach in crew at Middlebury. • Sparkle Joyner is
the dean of culture for Citizen Schools in NYC. • Jieming
Sun is in a graduate program with Trafigura in Singapore.

• Lany Jenna Khattiva is a co-owner of Happy Paws Pet
Care and is working as a production assistant on various
films and Web series in Seattle, Wash. • Mike Ogutu is
a senior associate at State Street in Boston and also the
executive director for Ungana Scholars Project. Check
out www.facebook.com/UnganaScholarsProject. • Haley
MacKcen teaches chemistry and coaches soccer and
hockey at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass. • Alex
Margarite is singing, touring, and doing a cappella produc¬
tion with the professional Boston-based a cappella group,
Overboard. • Jennifer Nelthropp is a Lower School
teaching intern at Greenwich Academy in Greenwich,
Conn. • Philip Palmer is an elementary school teacher at
Tulsa Lighthouse Charter School with Teach for America
in Tulsa, Okla. • Quan Pham has received a Fulbright
grant and is in Da Nang, Vietnam, teaching English at Bac
Lieu Univ. • Vincent Recca is a regional field director for
the NW Missouri Democratic Party in St. Joseph, Mo. •
Amethyst Tate is a news desk reporter at the International
Business Times in NYC. • Hallie Woods is a field hockey
coach at Wells (Maine) Junior High School. • Pui Shen
Yoong is a consultant with the UNDP International
Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth in Brazil. • Santy
Barrera is a Zumba instructor part time in New Jersey,
NYC, and Philadelphia as well as a NYC Civic Corps
member. Also, he is planning to travel to South America!

• A l ex a n d e r < lement is working at Kent Denver School
in Englewood in Denver, Colo. “I’m teaching computer
science and also working with the IT/tech support de¬
partment.” • Emily Nunez writes, “After commissioning
as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army last spring, I’m
attending the U.S. Army Military Intelligence school in
Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., after which I will be stationed at Ft.
Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo.”

— Class Correspondents: Darryl Johnson (dajohnso@
middlebury.edu); Paige Keren (pkeren12@gmail.com).

90 Middlebury magazine

OBITUARIES

Roger S. Thompson, 93, of Green Bay, Wis.,
on March 19, 2012. At Middlebury he was a Chi
Psi, was on the track and football teams, and in the choir.
With a master’s in library science from Columbia Univ.,
he was the first professional librarian in the Yale math
dept. Moving to Woodridge, Ill., he served as the phys¬
ics and high energy physics librarian at Argonne National
Laboratory and was the library director at Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory, retiring in 1987. Predeceased by
wife Marilyn (Taylor), he is survived by daughter Cathy,
son Steven, and two grandchildren.

Elizabeth A. Bucher, 93, of Katy, Texas, on
January 6,2012. A Phi Mu at Middlebury, she spent
a year at the Katherine Gibbs School after graduation. She
worked in NYC then moved to Cleveland where she spent
30 years in the manufacturing firm Warner & Swasey. She
was a charter member of the National Secretaries Assoc.
Survivors include nephews William, Douglas, and Patrick,
and five grandnephews/nieces.

L. Elizabeth Dorchester, 93, of Brattleboro, Vt., on
March 21,2012. After leaving Middlebury, where she was a
Tri-Delt, she began a career in teaching, joining the faculty
at Northfield School for Girls as a math teacher. Adding
French classes to her schedule, she earned a master’s in
1969 from Middlebur/s French School. For 30 summers
she worked at Camp Kehonka in New Hampshire. At
age 57 she began studying the cello and played in small
ensembles.

Jean Sweeny Hancock, 93, formerly of Darien, Conn.,
on February 17, 2012. While at Middlebury she skied
with the newly formed coed intercollegiate ski team and
worked on the Kaleidoscope. After graduation she worked
in NYC for an insurance company. Settling in Darien with
her family, she was an active volunteer in her community,
serving with the Girl Scouts and driving for the Red Cross
and other organizations, supplying rides to appointments
for residents. Predeceased by husband John, she is sur¬
vived by daughter Cynthia, three grandchildren, and one
great-grandson.

Loring W. Pratt, 93, of Fairfield, Maine, on March
13, 2012. An Alpha Sigma Psi at Middlebury, he entered
medical school at Johns Hopkins after graduation. After
his residency, he served two years in the U.S. Air Force
before being honorably discharged as a captain. He joined
a private practice in Waterville, Maine, where he worked
as an otolaryngologist until retiring in 1984. He was then
invited back to Johns Hopkins as a visiting professor for 15
months and to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for five months.
During his career he was a member of numerous national
medical societies, attaining fellowship in many of them.
He also served as a consultant with many medical centers
throughout Maine. He was a Mason since 1940, a mem¬

ber of the Fairfield Historical Society, a Master Gardener,
and a photographer. A loyal Midd alum, he served for
many years as a class correspondent. He is survived by
wife Jeanette (Burque), sons George, Robert, Harold, and
John, daughters Anne, Susan, Patricia, Kathy, and Ethel, 25
grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.

Willard Littlehale, 92, of Fitchburg, Mass., on
February 29, 2012. At Middlebury he was in Alpha
Sigma Psi and sang in the choir. During WWII, he served
with the Navy in the Pacific as a supply and disbursing offi¬
cer with the rank of lieutenant senior grade. For 20 years he
worked in retail merchandising for various stores, includ¬
ing seven years as store superintendent at Arnold Dept.
Store in NYC. After earning a certificate of accounting
at Bentley College, he was a credit manager and financial
counselor at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass. He was
a member of Stratton Theatre in Fitchburg and enjoyed
acting in plays. He is survived by two nieces and a nephew.

Harriet Tillinghast Fuller, 92, of West
Hartford, Conn., on March 28, 2012. After gradua¬
tion she worked at the Southern New England Telephone
Co. until her marriage. An active volunteer, she delivered
Meals on Wheels, served in her church, and worked in
a program for the mentally handicapped. Predeceased
by husband Denison, she is survived by daughter
Elizabeth Booth, son Peter, seven grandchildren, and two
great-grandchildren.

William D. Livingstone, 90, of San Diego, Calif., on
May 11, 2010. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa, he earned
a degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD
from Yale Divinity School. For many years he was the
minister of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of San
Diego. In 1971 he earned a JD from Western State Univ.
Middlebury bestowed an honorary Doctor of Divinity on
him in 1956.

Frederick H. Booth, 90, of Kitty Hawk, N.C.,
on February 13, 2012. After a year at Middlebury,
where he was in Chi Psi, he transferred to Springfield
College, where he earned his BS and master’s in physi¬
cal education. During WWI I he served in the Army Air
Corps as a staff sergeant. He taught physical education at
Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., before joining the staff
at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J., where he
taught PE for 34 years and coached basketball and football
as well as umpiring high school and college baseball games.
Survivors include wife Faith (Smith), daughter Barbara ’69,
sons Doug andjim, four stepchildren, three grandchildren,
and five stepgrandchildren.

Elizabeth Scherholz Pell, 90, of Knoxville, Tenn., on
March 3, 2012. After graduating from Penn State, where
she was an Alpha Xi Delta sorority member, she worked

at American Sugar Refining Co. during WWII. She en¬
joyed travel with her husband and became very involved
with Alzheimer’s support groups after his diagnosis.
Predeceased by husband Lawrence, she is survived by
daughters Susan Evans and Derinda Stiene, son Thomas,
six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Deceased
Middlebury relatives include sister Margaret Scherholz
Delfausse ’37. Surviving Middlebury relatives include
nephew Peter Delfausse ’65, niece Abigail Delfausse ’72,
and great-nephew Pierre Delfausse ’93.

Donald A. Perry, 87, of Denton, Texas, on
February 24, 2012. At Middlebury he was in Kappa
Delta Rho. During WWII he served in the Army in the
South Pacific. He worked at Chance Vought Aircraft in
Dallas, Texas, as an engineer for seven years before joining
Texas Instruments (TI). During a move to Massachusetts
with TI, he also taught night school at Providence (R.I.)
Junior College. He retired in 1989 as a senior mem¬
ber of the technical staff. Predeceased by wife Martha
(McClellan), he is survived by sons Scott and Don, daugh¬
ters Penny Dickerson and Cindy Obbink, nine grandchil¬
dren, and nine great-grandchildren. Deceased Middlebury
relatives include brother Samuel ’41. Surviving Middlebury
relatives include nephew James Perry ’60.

Scott T. Pike, 86, of Newburyport, Mass., on
August 20, 2009. During WWII he served in the
Navy. At Middlebury he was a member of Delta Upsilon.
With a master’s from the Univ. of Minnesota, he worked
at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co. as a textbook sales¬
man for 24 years, retiring in 1978. He and his wife worked
several years as caretakers and curators of the John
Greenleaf Whittier Birthplace. Survivors include wife
Betty (Brackett), daughters Ruth Allen, Meg Costello, and
Amanda Pike, four grandchildren, and one great-grandson.

Barbara Roemer Ready, 85, of Southern Shores, N.C.,
on February 5, 2012. With a year at Berkeley Secretarial
School, she worked in NYC for National City Bank and
Domino Sugar before raising her children. She and her
husband enjoyed traveling around the U.S. in retirement.
Predeceased by husband William, she is survived by
daughters Susan, Karen, and Judy, son David, 10 grandchil¬
dren, and two great-grandchildren. Surviving Middlebury
relatives include cousin Amy Atwood Kvaal ’96.

Margaret Mettler Schnorf, 80, of Venice, Fla., on
December 11, 2006. She graduated from Akron Univ. with
a BS in secretarial science. A military wife, she lived all
over the world and was named U.S. Army-Japan Military
Wife of the Year in 1971. She and her husband raised four
children, Richard, Robert, Charles, and Susanne.

Seymour Pollock, 84, of Homestead, Fla., on
March 30, 2012. After teaching four years in Spain

Winter 2013 91

IN MEMORIAM

The following is a list of deaths reported to us since the pre¬
vious issue went to the printers. Full obituaries will appear in
future issues of the magazine.

Melissa Dunham McCarty ’39.August 11, 2012

Marjorie Poor Doyle ’40.October 28, 2012

Virginia Brooks Hutton ’41.August 14, 2012

M. Suzanne Milholland MacArthur ’41 . November 3, 2012

Norma Winberg Unsworth 41.November 4, 2012

Lawrence A. Glazier ’42.October 24, 2012

Elizabeth Blanchard Robinson ’42 . . . September 30, 2012

Jane Botsford Armstrong’43.November 1, 2012

Ralph C. DeCastro ’43.August 29, 2012

Barbara Wait Sabin 44.October 27, 2012

Esther Kennedy Graf 45.May 31, 2011

Jean Lacey Patterson ’45.August 22, 2012

Raymond E. Walch 45.October 21, 2012

Cornelia Smith Carpenter 46.August 24, 2012

Phyllis Hewson Evans ’46.August 20, 2012

Willard C. Butcher 48.August 25, 2012

Judith Little Frew ’48.August 26, 2012

Marya Steele Kellogg 48.September 18, 2012

Jack F. Kofoed ’48.June 14, 2012

Kaye Sturges Trimmer 48.August 3, 2011

Howard K. Boone ’49.August 5, 2012

Leonard R. Smith '50.August 4, 2012

Frederic C. deLearie ’51.May 13, 2012

William A. Mcllwain ’51.September 20, 2012

Elizabeth Parker Burrows ’52.August 17, 2012

Marilyn Buist Scott '53.September 8, 2012

Jane Coffin ’54.August 7, 2012

William H. Admirand *55.October 5, 2012

Robert H. Studley ’55.August 7, 2012

Lucile F. Withington '55.March 23, 2012

James A. McCann ’57.October 9, 2012

Leonard B. Colt Jr. ’58.September 26. 2012

Harriette Moseley Purdy ’59.October 24. 2012

Phillip A. Caruso ’60.November 10, 2012

Samuel E. Allen ’69.September 30, 2012

Reginald Fitz ’69.October 17, 2012

Edwina Shivelhood-Kartez ’73.September 6, 2012

GRADUATE SCHOOLS

Stephen R. Lawrence. MA English *51 September 26, 2012

Ann Lyons Fry, MA English ’67.August 4. 2012

Jean B. Baker, MA English ’68 .June 23, 2012

Penelope Homan Neale,

MA English'70.\ September 25. 2012

Anthony P. Petruzzi, MA English ’76.June 12, 2012

William A. Kromer, MA English ’86 ... . October 2, 2012

Patricia C. Ellison, MA English ’97.October 5, 2012

Estelle Peavey Hunt, MA French ’38 . . . October 4, 2012
Frances A. Eastburn, MA French *46 . . . .August 17, 2012
Ellen Holman Goll, MA French ’64 ... . October 8, 2012

Patrick D. Moore, MA French '70.August 9, 2012

Hans-Joachim G. Mollenhauer,

DML German '73.October 2, 2012

Robert E.D. Hawkins,

MA Russian ’87.September 24, 2012

Alexander C. Hooker Jr.,

DML Spanish '54.February 15, 2012

Judith Frees Loredo, MA Spanish ’59. . February 23, 2012
R. Jerauld Hill Goodpasture.

MA Spanish '75.July 3. 2012

and serving as an escort interpreter for the Dept, of State,
he earned his master’s in Spanish from Middlebury and
joined the faculty of Washington College in Chestertown,
Md. With a PhD from UMass Amherst, he taught at vari¬
ous universities before moving to Florida where he was
the foreign language department chair at Miami Dade
College until his retirement in 1995.

Kenneth J. Simendinger. 86, of North
Brookfield, Mass., on February 16, 2012. During
his career he was an elementary school teacher, princi¬
pal, and an educational sales consultant with the Silver
Burdett Co. He supported a variety of youth, health, and
education programs. Predeceased by wife Priscilla, he is
survived by son Kent, daughters Pamela and Gretchen,
and seven grandchildren.

David J. Larned, 81, of Laurel, Mont., on
September 21, 2011. While at Middlebury, he
was in Delta Upsilon. He started Larned Tree Service in
Ohio in the early 1950s and moved the business to Laurel
in 1972. In 1950 he married Florence Havel and they had
three children, David, John, and Andrea.

James M. Havens, 80, of Corning, N.Y., on
March 9, 2012. With a master’s from Florida State
Univ. and a master’s and PhD from London (England)
Univ., he was a glacial climatologist. From 1965-1970 he
was an assistant professor at the Univ. ofWestern Ontario
in Canada and from 1970-1980 he was an associate pro¬
fessor at the Univ. of Rhode Island. Middlebury relatives
include cousin William Osborne ’67.

Graham T. Rowley, 79, of Salisbury, Md., on
February 1, 2012. He earned a BA at Duke Univ.,
an MA from the Univ. of Illinois, and an MDiv from the
Episcopal Divinity School. He also served in the Air
Force, holding the rank of lieutenant. For 43 years he
was an Episcopal priest, serving parishes in several states,
including Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Survivors include son Daniel, daughter Elizabeth, and
two grandchildren.

Gordon I. Ulmer, 79, of Old Lyme, Conn., on February
4, 2012. At Middlebury he was in Kappa Delta Rho and
on the ski team. A graduate of the American Institute
of Banking and the Harvard Univ. Graduate School
of Business Administration Advanced Management
Program, he joined the Connecticut Bank and Trust Co.
in 1957, ultimately serving as chairman and CEO. He
became president of the Bank of New England in 1988,
retiring in 1990. He also served on the board of direc¬
tors of Hartford Financial Services Group, Hartford Life,
Rayonier, and the Old State House Assoc. He is survived
by sons Gordon and Craig and three grandchildren, as
well as former wife Sandra (McKeon).

Robert G. Wilson III, 79, of Marshfield, Mass.,
on February 3, 2012. A DKE at Middlebury, he
played on the football team. With a law degree from
Suffolk Univ. Law School, he began his private practice in
Boston in 1961. Active in his community, he was a cofound¬
er of Duxbury Youth Football, was a longtime Mason,
serving as Master of the Lodge, and active in the Shriners,
serving on the board of governors. Predeceased by wife
Robin (Frey), he is survived by daughters Constance ’80
and Sara, sons Robert ’78 and John, and 10 grandchildren.
Other surviving Middlebury relatives include sister Mary
Wilson ’65 and cousin Albert Scullin ’59.

Helge Kjekshus. 75, of Osteras, Norway, on
January 13, 2009. At Middlebury he was a member
of Alpha Sigma Psi and skied on the varsity ski team. After
earning a master’s and PhD in political science at Syracuse
Univ., he was appointed a lecturer in 1966 at the Univ. in
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he wrote many articles
about Tanzanian politics and authored the book, Ecology
Control and Economic Development in East Africa. Returning
to Norway in 1975, he worked in the Norwegian Foreign
Political Institute. He is survived by wife Nadia, children
Helge and Lisen, and one granddaughter.

Gayla Harper Buccino, 74, of Spring, Texas, on
March 23, 2012. At Middlebury she was a part of
Theta Chi Omega and on the WRMC staff. For 10 years
she worked in cancer research at Yale Medical School and
the Institute of Cellular Biology at UConn. As her chil¬
dren were growing up she sold real estate, Avon products,
and worked in the field of personnel consulting. She was
also very involved in dog rescue with Pals for Pooches. She
is survived by husband Ray, daughters Linda Rucker and
Amy West, and two grandchildren.

Donald L. Taylor, 76, of West Chester, Pa., on March
27, 2012. A Delta Upsilon at Middlebury, he played on the
football and lacrosse teams. He served in the Army after
graduation then began working at AT&T, where he spent
his career, retiring in 1997. He enjoyed tennis, squash, and
golf and coaching his grandchildren’s sports teams. He is
survived by wife Janet (Brouse) ’59, sons Peter, John, and
Paul ’86, and 10 grandchildren. Deceased Middlebury rela¬
tives include brother John Taylor ’54.

J. Stephen Tiirner, 74, of Santa Cruz, Calif., on March
18, 2012. A Phi Kappa Tau at Middlebury, he was com¬
missioned a lieutenant in the Army after graduation and
learned Mandarin Chinese at the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey, Calif., before going to Korea. He
resigned his commission in 1964 and earned a master’s in
intergroup relations at UPenn. After 10 years as a com¬
munity organizer and antipoverty program executive, he
became a full-time writer on labor and environmental is¬
sues and was a founding member of the National Writers’

92 Middlebury magazine

ClassActs

Union. In 2010 his book Amber Waves and Undertow was
published and in 2011 his book Drylands, a Rural American
Saga came out. Survivors include wife Anne (Tweedy), son
Nicholas, and several grandchildren.

Richard L. Perley, 73, of Laconia, N.H., on
January 17, 2012. After graduating from Babson
College with a degree in investments and management,
he worked in and managed ski areas in Colorado and
Pennsylvania for eight years. He and his wife then ran a
Dairy Queen in Laconia for 15 years. He also owned Jan
& Her Friends, a children’s clothing store. Predeceased
by wife Gale (Kaiser), he is survived by daughters Marcia
Gagnon and Michelle Brown, son Craig, and four
grandchildren.

Nancy Gould Clark, 71, of Windsor, Conn., on
March 22, 2012. She had a successful career as a
program analyst for the real estate investment systems
with Cigna Corp., retiring in 1998. An active volunteer,
she was a Girl Scout leader, led cultural programming
in the elementary school, served in numerous church
positions, and was president of the Windsor Historical
Society, among others. She is survived by husband Randy
’61, daughters Melissa Brennan, Heather Clark ’89 and
husband Bill DiAdamo ’87, and Rebecca Bennett ’92 and
husband Steve ’90, and seven grandchildren.

Michael S. Kulick, 71, of West Hartford, Conn., on
March 11, 2012. At Middlebury he was a member of Zeta
Psi and worked on the Campus. With a law degree from
Columbia Univ. School of Law, he spent two years in
the Adjutant General Corps, of the Army, stationed in
Washington, D.C. Moving to West Hartford, he pursued
a career in law and was a member of the Hartford County,
Connecticut, and American Bar Associations. He was also
a member of the Probus Club of Greater Hartford and
Beth El Temple. Survivors include wife Alexandra Flowers,
son David, daughter Rachel, and three grandchildren.

Thomas M. Mettee, 70, of Russell Township,
Ohio, on February 16, 2012. At Middlebury
he was a member of Sigma Epsilon, Blue Key Society,
Wabanakee, and the football and lacrosse teams. He also
served as sophomore class president. With a degree from
the Univ. of Rochester School of Medicine, he served
three years in the Navy in Hawaii before completing his
residency at UNC in Chapel Hill. He joined the faculty at
UNC family medicine and then at Case Western Reserve
family medicine before going into private practice in
Chesterland, Ohio. More recently he was instrumental in
the development of Homecare Education and Resource
Teams (HEARTS). Survivors include wife Jan, daughter
Kim, sons Chris and Jeff, and five grandchildren. Surviving
Middlebury relatives include brother Howard ’61 and
cousin John Mettee ’66.

Linda G. Johnson, 65, of Melrose, Mass., on
February 27, 2012. After receiving her degree from
Defiance College, she worked as a paralegal at law firm
White and Fudala in Lexington, Mass., for many years. She
was a member of the Melrose Humane Society and loved
nature and wildlife. Predeceased by her parents and broth¬
er David, she is survived by sister Sally and three nieces
and nephews. Deceased Middlebury relatives include
uncle Roland Johnson ’38.

DirkJ. Leach, 56, of Bar Mills, Maine, on March
23, 2012. Inspired by Thoreau, he left corporate
America and moved to Maine where he became a crafts¬
man of hand-hewn walking sticks, rustic furniture, and
Adirondack chairs. During a session of the Senate on
September 23,2010, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) spoke in
recognition of Dirk Leach Rustic Arts, which became an
entry in the Congressional Record. Survivors include wife
Christine (Cioffi), his parents, and three sisters.

Kathleen R. Hazard, 39, of Milford, Mass., on
February 21, 2012. After graduation she worked in
St. Petersburg, Russia, before moving to Boston where she
worked for Psyche Systems as a technical writer and quali¬
ty assurance analyst. Predeceased by mother Linda (Bates),
she is survived by father Paul, sister Molly, and three nieces
and nephews.

FACULTY

Paul M. Cubeta, 87, of Washington, D.C., on July 14,
2012. After serving in the Navy during WWII, he earned
his BA in English from Williams College in 1947. With a
PhD in English language and literature from Yale Univ.,
he taught English at Middlebury from 1952-1989. He
served as the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers’
Conference and in 1964 he became the director of the
Bread Loaf School of English. During his 25 years as direc¬
tor, he expanded the program to include Lincoln College
at Oxford Univ. He was best known for his inspired teach¬
ing of Shakespeare and 20th-century poetry, as well as for
assembling a dedicated and talented faculty at Bread Loaf
After retiring from Middlebury in 1989, he continued
teaching Shakespeare and contemporary poetry to adults
at Johns Hopkins Univ. and American Univ. Predeceased
by wife Beth (Brown), he is survived by sons Philip, David,
andjim, six grandchildren, and companion Franz Jaklitsch.

STAFF

Katherine Clark Jimmo, 62, of Ripton, Vt., on June 13,
2012. She began working in Dining Services at the College
in 1992, starting at Freeman International Center before
moving to Ross and also assisting with catering functions.
She retired in 2009. She was a member of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars Auxiliary Post in Middlebury and the
American Legion Auxiliary Post in Bristol and enjoyed
bowling. She also worked for many years at Clark Nursing

Home. Survivors include companion Gene Warner, chil¬
dren Melissa Gearwar, Wendy Barrows, and William
Jimmo, and six grandchildren.

GRADUATE SCHOOLS

r* Richard M. Keer, 88, MA German, of Palm
^ JL Coast, Fla., on December 31, 2011. During WWII
he served in the U.S. Army in England and Germany. An
educator and linguist, he had a 35-year career as a teacher,
administrator, and student of foreign languages.

John P. Aranguren, 90, MA Spanish, of Berkeley,
Calif., on January 13, 2012. During WWII he
served in the Navy as an airplane mechanic. He taught
Spanish at California High School in San Ramon for 10
years and Spanish and French at Rio Hondo College in
Whittier for 20 years, retiring in 1985.

Mary Nagle Yelda, MA French, 85, of San Diego,
Calif., on November 16,2011.

Russell O. Salmon II, 75, MA Spanish, of
Bloomington, Ind., on May 28, 2009. He was an
associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana
Univ.

Alfonso V. Hernandez, 74, MA Spanish, of
Visalia, Calif., on January 19, 2012. With a CPhil
in Spanish language and literature from UCLA, he taught
Spanish for 33 years at Santa Barbara City College and
chaired the foreign languages dept, for many years. He re¬
tired as professor emeritus.

Virginia Oliver Piccolin, 82, MA Spanish, of
Pittsburgh, Pa., on February 20, 2008. She was a
high school language teacher for 20 years in the Mercer
(Pa.) Area School District and in retirement volunteered
at the Literacy Council of Mercer County.

Siegfried B. Jucknies, 78, MA German, of
Uvalde, Texas, on January 9, 2012. Born in
Konigsberg, Germany, he taught for 37 years at Southwest
Texas Junior College.

Diann L. Gruber, MA French, of Paris, France,
in December 2011. She taught English and taught
teachers how to teach English.

Maria B. Rubio, 49, MA Spanish, of Barre,
Vt., on January 15, 2012. For 20 years she taught
Spanish and French at Northfield (Vt.) High School. More
recently she worked for Sudexo Food Service at Norwich
Univ.

Winter 20/3 93

Classifieds

ANTIQUES

Stone Block Antiques. 219 Main St.,
Vergennes, Vermont 05491. Fridays
9am-9pm or by chance/appointment.
Furniture, silver, paintings, rugs,
porcelain, etc. Downsizing and/or have
items you no longer need? I travel
throughout the Northeast for quality
antiques, estates. Greg Hamilton ’79.

802.877.3359 or sbainc57@yahoo.com.
www.stone-block-antiques.com.

CAREER ADVISOR
Victoria Seiden Gonin ’83 is a
seasoned career coach who works with
alumni who are going through a career
transition. First call is complimentary.
Victoriagonin@gmail.com OR
^ I 7 * 3 I 4 -^ 455 -

LOOKING TO RENT
Retired Director French Language
School and Middlebury ’60 spouse
wish to rent 3-4 BR house in Middle¬
bury from late July to late August 2013.
Please contact:
anne_jourlait@gmail.com.

LODGING & WEDDINGS
Lilac Inn. Brandon. Custom Vermont
weddings in any season. Historic 1909
Mansion & grounds. 800.221.0720.
www.lilacinn.com.

Middlebury Bed and Breakfast.

Five minute walk to campus and
downtown. Charming Weybridge
Street location.
www.aroominthevillage.com.

REAL ESTATE

PrivateCommunities.com. Tour
the top retirement, vacation and
golf communities at
www.PrivateCommunities.com

In Today’s Global Market, Real
Estate Is Still A Local Business.

Are you planning an international
real estate transaction? Call a member
of the International Real Estate
Federation (FIABCI). Gain access
to our network of 5,000 members in
50 countries worldwide. Contact
Christine Fraioli, CRS, Realtor, Lang
McLaughry Spera Middlebury.

802.385.1112, cfvt@gmavt.net;
www.vermontlodgingproperties.com

VACATION RENTALS
BreadLoaf Retreat. Adjacent to the
BL campus; mountain views and open
fields. Charming home with modern
kitchens and bathrooms, fireplaces,
wrap-around porch, grill, bicycles.
Rent weekly as 4 BR/3.5 bath; 3 BR/2.5
bath; or 1 BR/i bath. See: www.
bicknelladvisory.com/vermonthouse.
Phone 303.955.7865.

Rent by the Day, Week, Month in
Lincoln, VT. Need an inexpensive
place to stay when visiting Middlebury
and surrounds? Search: “Luxury Barn
Apartment near Middlebury” on www.
Airbnb.com, then call 802.385.1112.

New Haven, Vermont. New guest
house on Don & Cheryl Mitchell’s
sheep farm. Spacious, open floor plan
sleeps four. Full kitchen and bath,
marvelous views, farm activities. 7
miles to campus. Google on “Treleven

Annex” for rates, photos, floor plan.
802.545.2278.

Vail, Golden Peak rental across from
Lifts and Ski School. Two blocks to
downtown. Custom kitchen, 3 bedrooms,
2 bathrooms, steam shower, wood-
burning fireplace, expansive mountain
view. Photos and rates: www.vail-rent-
al.blogspot.com or 503.531.0441.

Italian Rental. Historic house and
garden with panoramic views in Civita
di Bagnoregio, small hilltown between
Rome and Florence. Sleeps up to five.
$1,500 weekly. Carol Watts, cmwatts@
mac.com, http://www.civitarental.com

Mad River, Sugarbush Area.
Comfortable farmhouse for up to 20.
Ski season: $55o/day, 2 day minimum.
Matthew Iler ’88 978.922.6903.

REACH OUT TO 50,000 ALUMNI

Advertise in
Middlebury Magazine

For display and classified advertising
please eontact Abby Hummel
18 Garfield Street, Bristol, VT 05443
Phone 802.453.2913
E-mail: Abby@GetSmartVT.com

Your Own Green Mountain Getaway!

Ski, bike, hike, or hang
out on 11+ acres near
the heart of Ripton. Year-
round weekend reunions or
family vacations. Sleeps up
to 10 with three full baths.
Huge stone fireplace and
cozy woodstove. Large
mudroom for plenty of gear.
Full basement with laundry
and workbench, plenty of
storage. $229,000

Contactjbark@sover.net or 802-989-0002.
More info at http://www.billbeck.com/
realestate/detailview/80//4171253/.

An Affiliate Of

Lang McLaughry Spera

REAL ESTATE

www. LMSRE. com

\TEFUL HILL FARM - Spectacular Green |
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nestled on 69 . 4 ± acres in the Green Mtns.
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FINE VERMONT & NEW HAMPSHIRE PROPERTIES
550 Hinesburg Road, South Burlington 802.846.7939 or 800.876.6447 * www.LionDavis.com

94 Middlebury magazine

MIDDLEBURY & VERMONT PRINTS

Old Chapel, Kingsland Bay & Snow Bowl prints are available in two sizes, 8”xlo” and ll”xl4"
through local Middlebury artist EJ Bartlett. Each print is hand signed and individually numbered.
They are printed on kraft paper with archival inks with the exception of the n"xl 4 ” Kingsland Bay
print, which is letterpressed onto chipboard.

WWW.EJCREATIVE.COM I EJ@EJCREATIVE.COM

Weybridge—Minutes
from Middlebury
College & town

Custom built cape with
pastoral & Green Mountain
views. Over-sized screened
porch, well-planned kitchen
with brick fireplace &
hearth. Three-stall horse
barn—convenience, quality
& comfort! $ 749,900
MLS # 4176497

Middlebury—Excellent
in-town location

Complete barn renovation in
I 1995 salvaged the quality
timbers & flooring to create a
home with character & charm,
while updating windows,
bathrooms, heating, & adding
a new garage & 2-story, cathe¬
dral ceding studio space.

3 bedrooms, 2 fireplaces &
open living/dining area.
Walking distance to downtown
Middlebury. $ 445,000
MLS# 4175681

Ingrid Punderson Jackson ’88
Real Estate

44 Main Street
Middlebury, VT 05753
802-388-4242

www.middvermontrealestate.com

The Shoreham Inn

This Vermont inn for sale has a great history of hospitality. Located in the apple orchard countryside of the
Lake Champlain Valley, the Shoreham Inn has been welcoming travelers for more than 200 years. The Inn
is a hugely successful B&B with a devoted following of return guests (in fact, business here grew during
the recession) and the Gastropub is beloved by the local community (read: steady, reliable income).
But the fact is that its current owners are ready for the next big thing. And now, the Shoreham Inn could
be your next big thing! A comfortable, old-world atmosphere pervades the Main House featuring seven
rooms with historical details, comfortable common spaces, a dining room and the Gastropub. The Sheep
Bam, renovated in 2009, is located behind die Main House. Here you’ll find modem loft-style suites
with kitchenettes. This inn and pub are very popular and have received rave reviews from the New York
Times and the Wall Street Journal. It is also a sought-after location for large and small weddings and
odier celebratory events. More than a turn-key operation, the Shoreham Inn is your entree into a vibrant
Vermont community, less than 15 miles from Middlebury. Financials fully support asking price, recendy
reduced to $1,125,000. Owner financing available. For details see wwu.BuyShorehamliin.com

Christine Fraioli ‘74 and John K. Nelson-CJW’, Realtors , Residential Specialists

Kxrluslrr AJJIIItlr of

Lang * McLaughry * Spera_

O <J J L Lion & Davis

66 Court Street • Middlebury, Vermont 05753
802-385-1112/1113 Fax: 802-388-7115

www.VermontLodgingProperties.com

Winter 2013 95

Mo’s Nobel

I he Nobel Prize in Literature recently awarded to
Chinese writer Mo Yan has created such an uproar
that the merits of his writing seem to have been lost
in the commotion. Taking center stage are cries about
the political implications of honoring a member of
the Communist Party and questions about the party

politics of the writer himself. Then there are the
financial questions: How will China best cash in on
Mo Yan? The mayor of Mo Yan’s hometown wants
to create a “Mo Yan brand,” and there is talk of
turning his hometown Gaomi into a theme park.

Seven years ago I interviewed the future Nobel
winner, and I have an entirely different take on the
current debate. It was September 2005, and I was
writing for a magazine based in Hong Kong. Mo
Yan’s brilliant epic Big Breasts and Wide Hips had
just come out in English; I was certain that he was
destined for greatness and must be featured. And
while my magazine was more interested in articles
on designer-clad, diamond-encrusted socialites
than culture, I continued to push for the story,
paying for my own flight to Beijing, intent on
meeting the author of that wild ride of a novel.

In person, Mo Yan had the well-fed look of
someone who has seen too much starvation and
famine to diet for fashion. He laughed easily, but
his smiles were rare. There were smiles all around,
though, on the faces of the staff vying to serve
him coffee in the Beijing hotel lobby. Who would
have guessed, in a country as vastly populated as
China, that an ordinary-looking writer would be
as recognizable as a pop star or actor?

Our conversation about his novel turned im¬

mediately to politics. It became clear that Mo
Yan’s relationship with Communist Party policy is
infinitely complex. He said that if he had written
the same book 20 years ago he might have been
shot, adding that he does not take political sides
in his novel, but tries to “treat all as human. I want
to show the real China and real life. It seems that
[my book] is about a village, but it is actually about
China’s history. In this book I want to cover everv
critical issue of the last century.” Speaking about
his future works, his face darkened as he men¬
tioned the unknown consequences he always fears
they could provoke. “A writer without controversy
is not a good one. A book without controversy is
not a good one, either.”

After the interview, I visited a sun-filled Tianan¬
men Square. When the changing of the guards
began, I was singled out by an official and loudly
berated, a club waved in my face. Uncomprehend¬
ing, I did not move until a girl beside me pushed
me down and whispered that he had said I was
too tall and blocked the view of people behind
me. Forced to the ground in the shadow of Mao,
I started to understand the enormity of the task
Mo Yan has set for himself, which in his words is
“to cover every critical issue of the last century.”

Now, however, many are denouncing Mo Yan’s

win. Dissident writer Yu Jie says it is a victory for
the Communist Party, and the American educated
artist Ai Weiwei paints Mo Yan to be a sellout.
Even the 2009 Nobel literature laureate Herta
Muller calls it a “catastrophe.”

I disagree. To write such compelling fiction fea¬
turing current government corruption, inhumane
policies, and the country’s bloody history without
being jailed, censored, or having to leave his na¬
tive villagers and country in favor of citizenship
abroad, speaks to the deep level of artistry in Mo
Yan’s novels and his commitment to his adoring
Chinese public. Moreover, the clout of his Nobel
now permits him to vocalize opinions that have
hitherto only been possible through the veil of
his writing. This makes his pen name, translated
as “don’t speak,” even more of an irony.

But, be assured that none of this current debate
can really be affecting Mo Yan all that much, given
his stance that controversy is the mark of good
writing. By his own standards, he has proved
himself a tour de force. I just worry where he will
write his next novel once Gaomi is turned into a
theme park. □

Anna Schonberg 95 has a masters in East Asian studies
from Stanford and currently lives in Los Angeles.

By Anna Schonberg ’95

96 Middleburv magazine

ILLUSTRATION BY RIKI BLANCO

s 44vQ/ £ig Ue/A?

What big idea will you help happen?
MiddSTART lets you choose a project, help to fund it,
and get updates from the students involved—all online.

To discover more innovative ideas
Middlebury students want to share, visit

go.middlebury.edu/#wi^As4'w4'

A MIDDSTART SUCCESS - WITH ALUMNI SUPPORT.

No one expects much from children in the Huruma slums of
Nairobi, Kenya. But the pioneering New Dawn School is giving
them hope and direction they've never had. With MiddSTART
gifts from alumni, Nairobi native Kennedy Mugo '12.5 and
his Middlebury team built a clean, quiet library for New
Dawn students and are filling it with books.

(Shown here: team member Sivhanyaa Kamalanathan '15 and students)

JIMINY

A sustainable
protein product for
developing countries.

MANAGEMENT

A new scientific way to
control milfoil growth
in Vermont lakes.

Midd START

CONCUSSIONS

SPEAK

A website to
support athletes
with concussions.

AND MORE

furti 4-ta/ (vJc/*T £ig U

Senior Class

Middlebury Alumni.

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Please give us a call at 802-458-3276 with inquiries or to schedule a tour.

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